Folks, I fear that we stand on the bleeding edge of the next wave of bad marketing. In a word: Occupy. It seems that marketers, running short on new ideas of their own, have decided the time is ripe to replace their Got milk? rip-off taglines with the all-new Occupy _____. Have you seen them cropping up? It’s pretty bad. The most recent one I saw was: Occupy Savings. Ugh. Please stop.
Instead, let’s add one more phrase to the list of “DO NOT USE” slogans:
1. Just ____ it. (A million marketers should be paying Nike royalties on this one.)
2. Got _____? (It worked for milk because it was UNIQUE and UNEXPECTED.)
3. Occupy _____.
I’m sure there are others that deserve banishment. What am I forgetting?
As a freelance strategist with the chance to get inside corporate cultures and tinker with the best techniques for aligning behavior and processes with the expectations of customers, I’m always working to improve my tools for taking the pulse of an organization. In my most recent post, I suggested that MadLibs work well. Another research tool I like to use is one I call Get Rhythm.
Get Rhythm can be used as a facilitated workshop exercise or as a survey question inside organizations, and it’s pretty simple. Take six songs that represent a range of points of view, styles or meaning, and ask participants (employees, executives) to choose the one that is most like their company and explain their selection. Here’s the songs I often like to use (but there are many more out there that can work great):
• Queen: We Are The Champions
• Michael Jackson: Thriller
• Take Me Out To The Ball Game (as heard at baseball games)
• Johnny Cash: Folsom Prison Blues
• Somewhere Over The Rainbow (from Wizard of Oz)
• The Beatles: Helter Skelter
Obviously, there is no one right answer to this exercise. In fact, the song selection hardly matters. Every song, even one like Folsom Prison Blues, has different associations for different people. The power is in the explanation and the clarity you can get about a culture based on participants’ descriptions. And it’s fun! So, what song best fits your organization? -Scott
As a freelance strategist with expertise in qualitative research and facilitation, I often get asked to help companies learn more about themselves through dialogue with their employees and customers. One of my specialties, especially in workshop settings, is giving executives or customers the chance to have some fun while I pump them for relevant insights. This often includes art projects and the like, which always gets a rise out of the CFO in the room. “You want me to make a freakin’ collage!?” they say (before going on to thoroughly enjoy themselves).
One technique that’s ALWAYS fun and often leads to deep insight, whether in a workshop or survey setting, is the “MadLib” exercise. We all know MadLibs from childhood, right!? Maybe some of us still buy them occasionally for stocking stuffers or for the youngsters in our life. Well, have you considered using them for your business too? You should.
Here’s one MadLib style survey question I designed for an agency seeking to explore the depths of its identity as part of a rebranding process. Simple instructions were given to the staff: Put words in our customers’ mouths. For this exercise, imagine you’re a prospective client, and you’ve just visited Acme Agency (name changed) to see what they’re all about.
Boss,
I just met with Acme Agency today. What a _____ bunch of people: they’re _____, _____, _____, and they really seemed to __________. The work they showed was _____ and _____ kind of reminds me of _____. It’s clear that Acme is serious about _____ and that they value _____ and _____. What isn’t so clear is how they manage to __________. Their _____ seemed really strong, but when I asked about their _____, they said that _____. Anyway, it was a _____ visit. Before I left, they insisted that I _____. I was totally _____.
As I’m sure you can imagine, the answers were quite revealing. I encourage you to try one the next time you conduct an appropriate research project. -Scott
Here’s a little exercise that I’d highly encourage you to try some time (especially if you’re a marketer). I’ve seen it work in settings large and small, and it strongly demonstrates the power of story each and every time. It goes like this:
Grab someone you know (or a total stranger for that matter). In the next minute, share with them a story that is told in your family about another member of your family. Next, ask that person to summarize what that member of your family cares about. I’ll bet you they nail it. Based on one 15-60 second story, they’ll be able to summarize one or more of your family member’s personal values.
Lisa Watson, co-founder of Cupcake Jones, shares a funny story about testicular cancer!?
Wouldn’t you love it if you could tell such an effective story about your company!? YOU CAN! We, as marketers, spend hours every day crafting language, when we could be capturing and sharing the stories that exemplify our company’s values and benefits. Like never before, it’s time to become storytellers rather than wordsmiths.
For a little fun, and an example of this exercise in action, watch this clip from the session I did with Gary Hirsch at GoGreen ’09. Watch the whole thing or jump to the 26 minute mark for this specific exercise.
Over the past week, I’ve been blazing through the pages of Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione’s book, Brewing Up a Business. One part memoir, one part brand-building how-to, the book has been a refreshing change of pace. Through stories of his childhood and the early days of the brewery, Calagione shares a great many lessons that business owners of all stripes can learn from. One story in particular has stuck with me, as a parent, strategist, and storyteller:
My father worked long hours and wasn’t home until late evening many weeknights but on the weekends his children were his priority. Whether we were waiting in line for a ski lift at a mountain in Vermont or standing in the crowded grandstand of the demolition derby at the county fair, he would always ask us the same question, “What do these people need that they don’t have right now?” We would look out at the crowd and consider the best answer. The people in line at the ski mountain might need lip balm, the people sitting in the dusty grandstand might need a cup of lemonade.
Now, there are a great many things that I find compelling about this parent/child interaction. Honestly, I want to reach into the pages and thank Sam’s dad personally. On one level, it’s an example of what we, as account planners, researchers, and designers try to do every day. Look at any given person, group or place/time and identify an unmet (and perhaps unperceived) need. It’s in this space that great products and stories are created.
But on another level, I find this simple exercise to have revolutionary potential. Imagine if we taught our kids to think this way in their everyday lives! Instead of thinking about what YOU “need”, son, let’s examine our surroundings and think about what everybody else needs. You think you need a sno-cone or a new toy, but what do you think the other 20,000 people here need THE MOST. Among other things, this simple exercise could unlock the creative potential in our kids. It could create the next generation of entrepreneurs. It could mean that Haiti and Sudan and the homeless don’t get ignored. And it would most importantly get our kids thinking about the POSSIBILITIES around them. And who knows, perhaps it could put us planners and researchers out of work because our talents wouldn’t be quite so unique.
I, for one, put this question to my six-year-old today. And his answer doesn’t really matter. -Scott
Back when we lived in small villages with rich oral traditions and long cultural memories it was relatively easy for the story—and meaning—of a house, horse or hero to persist and develop generationally. It should come as no surprise, then, that our jetsetting, transmedia’d, mobile, modern lives have kind of interrupted those patterns (and…yeah, we don’t ride horses so often anymore). It’s hard to pass down a long local legend about a subdivision neighborhood that’s only ten years old, or for a product that will be thrown out by month’s end. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have stories and resources for conveying these stories, it means that there has been a shift regarding what the objects are and the ways in which the stories could be told. Perhaps we’re too busy playing around on our smartphones to stop and listen to as many long, rambling stories as we used …or maybe we just need to find a way to add smartphones (and the internet) into the equation?
coming to a tweet near you?
Indeed, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that we are coming up with new methods of storytelling and collective histories that are …well…. transmedia’d, mobile and modern. We are, after all, fundamentally social beings with an inquisitive streak that predates opposable thumbs. What are we doing now that we possess not only opposable thumbs but touchscreen mobile devices? The same thing we’ve been doing all along: interacting with our world through our social structures and the technological means by which such undertakings can be facilitated. Or, to make it sound less intimidating: we do stuff in our world; utilizing people and things as needed.
What’s interesting to me is to see the latest iterations of the “utilizing people and things as needed” part. This is because the social web is allowing an unprecedented confluence of people, things and worlds—stories, about real things, unfolding in real time, across a digital ecosystem that permits the democratic, horizontal and interactive production of content and correspondence. Instead of relying upon DJs and evening news producers for determining what we hear and how, we have things like Last.fm that bring us closer to a network-based musical listening experience and Youtube playlists, enabling users to tell a certain story by preparing a particular sequence of videos for others to view (and comment upon/respond to, accordingly).
This development—the streamlined horizontal addition of one’s own narrative or storytelling touches to things and ideas—is now being carried over to the analog world and it has important implications for the relationship between someone and the brands and people with whom they interact. While there are many facets of this (which I will surely continue to explore in subsequent posts), I wanted to take a moment to make an initial look at one in particular: the “Internet of Things”.
You can think of the Internet of Things as the inclusion of real-world objects to the internet, by virtue of physical sensors, QR codes and RFID tags. I’ll not talk too long on the basics of it and will instead steer you to ReadWriteWeb’s excellent (and persistent) coverage of the emergence of the Internet of Things. Allow me to summarize, as simply as possible, why this is an awesome development for brand strategy: imagine.the.storytelling.potential.
As brand strategists and marketers we always talk about fostering a close relationship between people and the brands they love—this adds a whole new dimension (namely, the 3rd dimension) to such efforts and smart brands will start playing in this space to find out just how it might be utilized by their users. While I envision there being a certain time and place for proprietary Internet of Things uses (see my previous gushing about Icebreaker’s “baacode” as a quasi-Internet-of-Things program), my sense is that much of this will (hopefully) follow the adage that “information wants to be free” and barriers will come down in favor of a ubiquitous and usable interface that crosses brand lines and product categories. A cool new contender: Itizen.
Describing itself as “a place to tell, share & follow the life stories of interesting things,” I think it has a lot of potential. It’s simple: you put one of Itizen’s TRACKit tags (available in stick-on or sew-on, depending upon the nature of the object) on whatever you want, then you register the code on the website and share its story. What it is, why it’s meaningful, where it’s been, and so on. Cool. Fascinating. Powerful.
I first heard about this kind of idea from the founder of Re-Shirt and love how it does more than just share things or even stories—it shares meaning. An opportunity for self-expression, cultivating connections between people on a very deep level: the little bits of life that are interesting and beautiful—(some of) the things that make life worth living. It’s an amazing step back to where we began: passing down stories of the valuable things in our lives, just with a new twist: a digital invitation to put your voice into the story as well.
What are your thoughts? Are people going to get burned out on all of this “sociality”? Do I have the wrong read on the “information wants to be free” thing? What are some of the neatest applications of the Internet of Things that you’ve come across or seen on the horizon? Let me know!
- Caleb
PS – for a great thought experiment regarding products and “sociality” as a factor of the Internet of Things, look here.
Contemporary marketing is about relationships in motion. This observation might seem axiomatic, but it’s worth unpacking: if our goal is to foster relationships between an organization and the people (note: people, not consumers) with whom it interacts, we need to be sure we’re facilitating the dynamic in a fulfilling and authentic manner. It’s like any relationship: you learn about one another by virtue of what you share and what you do. If you like what you learn, you seek a closer connection. As you’re getting to know someone, where is your emotional sense of them derived? The stories they share, the way their eyes light up when they passionately discuss a topic, and so on. If you ask someone “what do you stand for?” They might say: ”flip-flops on Fridays, free coffee refills and the abolition of the Designated Hitter rule.” But there’s another question—an unasked one—that is also being answered: “what moves you?” This question is at least as important but, again, answered more subtly: the way a person gesticulates wildly when talking about their favorite things, the company they keep, the way their stories all seem to circle back to the same particular issues—this is sometimes received subconsciously, but it is certainly stored away, deep in a person’s mind and heart. Again, it’s not just what you stand for, but what you move for. Does this person (or brand) leap into action for things that I care about? As fundamentally social beings we notice these things and store them away as the building blocks of subsequent relationships and social constructs.
Who wants to hang out with boring people?
Let’s take the observation that relationships are cultivated through sharing—the rational and emotional process of exchanging values and actions—and return to my original statement: marketing is about relationships. It would seem, then, that a big part of marketing concerns sharing the same things: values and actions. What are your organizations biggest passions? What inspires your employees to get out and volunteer? What does your brand support, even when the cameras aren’t rolling? People want to know these things, and in a world of increasingly democratic and horizontal communications, they’re going to find out. It is my thesis, then, that good, authentic marketing is about sharing with people not just the things that your brand stands for but also the things that it moves for. “Standing” implies values that are immutable …but also stationary. In our live-tweeting, 24/7 news cycling world, you might need to have a dynamic means of expressing yourself, too: this is action marketing. To be perfectly clear, this certainly doesn’t mean that the things that move you ought to be transitory or orthogonal to your identity. Indeed, the things that you move for need to be the things that are so brand-aligned that your entire organization leaps into action. It is precisely this action-through-alignment that sets you apart from the pack and closer to the people you’re trying to reach.
Obviously, it’s important to make sure that you articulate what your brand stands for (hopefully it’s more than flip-flops and coffee refills). What I’m suggesting here is that smart brands in the 21st century will need to be in tune with the confluence of two additional elements: time and passion. You want people to become passionate about your brand—it’s contagious. To share what moves you is to demonstrate that your organization is capable of being moved: it has personality. Life. We look for these ‘action’ characteristics because we have always looked for them in social relationships. These are the qualities we keep close and, in turn, share.
Businesses need this contagiousness. As brands become increasingly shared socially—horizontally—among people and across networks they need to have an authentic reason for doing so. Happiness spreads easily (witness the VW “Fun” project). So does indignation (just ask Nestle). We share and connect with all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, but they go nowhere if there are no actions with which people can resonate. Because of this, I encourage your brand strategizing (and expression) to reflect some thinking about what your brand moves for, because we know your customer is.
A compelling (and depressing) new video from Broken Social Scene, apparently created by one of the band’s many fans. Modern technology gives brands (and bands) the chance to create powerful values-based connections with their audience. Through music, of course, these connections have always been there, but this video is nevertheless a powerful demonstration of what can be created when you connect with and empower your fans to engage with you and your offerings.
Sometimes it seems that many social media “gurus” spend their time convincing companies that the web 2.0 world is entirely new and that the entire rulebook needs to be thrown out in favor of … well… more consultation from social media gurus. I don’t think this is necessarily so. To be sure, the internet and social media have forever changed the ways in which we interact with one another, brands and information itself. But I think it’s overstating the case to assert that nothing will ever be the same. Many things are the same, how we interact with them is different. People valuing an organization with integrity? The same. Customers appreciating a brand that goes out of its way to take care of them? The same. Individuals trying to find ways to share and learn more about the products they care about? The same.
For a great glimpse into the way the internet has changed things, I’d highly recommend reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (editor of Wired) and Wikinomics by Don Tapscott—these books do a great job of discussing how things have changed, while demonstrating that much of the values and interests (saving money, connecting with people, sharing information, etc.) that have been revolutionized by the internet are not new in and of themselves. Existing business leaders need to learn about these changes, but they can rest assured that brand-based thinking and authenticity are at least as valuable in the digital age as they have ever been.
This was on display as I recently had the pleasure of leading a seminar for the Sustainable Business Network of Portland on marketing and social media. It was a refreshing opportunity to go beyond the usual “Social Media 101” and take a deeper dive into tools, implementation and a couple case studies. I wanted to further the level of discourse concerning the use of social media among local businesses, without making it seem overly complex or foreign. Many of the attendees have been successful business owners for longer than I’ve been able to drive a car; they have marketing savvy and, as SBNP members, are deeply committed to local commerce—they’ve been around for a long time and they have a great story of authenticity to share. None of those things need to change, their brand-thinking just needs to be adapted to a new model of social interaction and information flow.
So many business leaders feel threatened by the social web and it’s all for naught. Businesses have always had to be mindful of where they advertise their product and how—of what people think about them and why. You need to understand your brand, your customer and how and where they interact. My seminar attendees seemed to resonate with the message that these same considerations still apply, it’s just that some of the answers have changed. To put it another way, as long as you ‘let the brand drive’ your marketing considerations, you will still be fine navigating the modern business landscape; it’s just that some of the destinations and travel partners are more fast-paced, democratic and diverse. Instead of an in-person opportunity for a few friendly sentences with your favorite patrons you might be conversing with hashtags and blog comments, but the basics of branding and a concern for your customer still remain— some things never go out of fashion.
- Caleb
<div style=”width:425px” id=”__ss_4738336″><strong style=”display:block;margin:12px 0 4px”><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/fromtherooftops/social-media-in-practice-4738336″ title=”Social Media in Practice”>Social Media in Practice</a></strong><object id=”__sse4738336″ width=”425″ height=”355″><param name=”movie” value=”http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=socialmedia2preso-forweb-100712170010-phpapp02&stripped_title=social-media-in-practice-4738336″ /><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”/><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”/><embed name=”__sse4738336″ src=”http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=socialmedia2preso-forweb-100712170010-phpapp02&stripped_title=social-media-in-practice-4738336″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”355″></embed></object><div style=”padding:5px 0 12px”>View more <a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/”>presentations</a> from <a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/fromtherooftops”>From The Rooftops</a>.</div></div>
This is part six of an ongoing series of developing thoughts on the intersection of authentic messaging and sustainability. In part one I introduce the concept of greenwash-fighting marketing that follows 5 “PRIME” principles: Participation, Rigor, Intentionality, Mutuality and Exchange. In part two I elaborate on the concept of participation. In part three I gush about rigor and how strong, verifiable sustainability information is one of the surest antidotes to greenwashing. In part four I discuss intentionality in terms of expressing an organization’s true sustainability aims: how to do it well and why it’s sometimes more important to be honest than good. In part five I consider the role of mutuality as a valuable step in moving authentic sustainability messaging externally, into the public realm. Please join me now as I look at exchange as a means of understanding how and why an increasingly empowered (and digitally connected) base of customers and supporters plays to the strengths of authentic brands. As always, comments are appreciated and encouraged.
Exchange
Sustainability claims: Are accompanied with an invitation to talk more about the company’s “walking of their sustainable talk” [Exchange]
Companies with authentic sustainability messaging have a huge advantage over greenwashers: as a customer presses deeper for more information they are presented with an increasingly compelling story. Because they have something to hide, inauthentic marketers will press for the opposite effect: deflect queries and obstruct deeper conversations as much as possible; many people are quite savvy to this behavior and don’t seem to appreciate it very much. To be sure, this is an unenviable position; perhaps this was possible back before consumers possessed the means of horizontal interaction, but those days are gone. Much of the public is quite skeptical about sustainability claims (and for good reason); the better equipped you are to demonstrate your chops, the better (and more differentiated) you are. This is exchange: the last (and perhaps most rewarding) step in the PRIME marketing process. You’ve set the foundation (participation), backed it up with integrity and depth (rigor, intentionality), talked about it accurately (intentionality), supported it with partners (mutuality) and have now successfully piqued the curiosity of the market. Relax and enjoy the ride: you’re doing good work and people want to talk with you about it.
How to go about this? It will, of course, depend upon your brand, goals, customer, etc., but there are some general principles and tools that are useful for most any organization. At its core, exchange is about being willing and able to talk with your customers, but even before that it’s about listening to them. Understanding what your customers want to know is not only invaluable for matters of business intelligence and strategy; it means that, if done properly, your responses will be received as being on-message, appropriate and meaningful.
This exchange between you and your customers (and your customers among themselves) is a great opportunity to share a fuller story of why you do what you do. Indeed, Simon Sinek, suggests you start with “why” because it is in the “why” that we can inspire people. Ever on-message, Start With Why is the title of his book and the theme of his TEDx talk.
Sinek offers a valuable means of connecting these dots with people because you’re making the connection together and in terms that are mutually significant. In his TEDx talk he suggests inverting the process of engaging people. Instead of spending all your time speaking about features and benefits (“what”) or value proposition (“how”), he observes that there is deep value when we talk about why we do what we do (“why”). It’s an invitation to share a deep, emotional connection that really gets to the heart of your reason for being in business. This invitation is ideally suited to the PRIME principle of exchange because it plays to your strengths: rigor, openness, passion and authenticity.
It has been said that “advertising is the price of being boring,” you have successfully demonstrated that you’re not boring because people are actively seeking you out. They want to talk with you about …well, YOU. Similar to Sinek’s proposition of starting with “why,” Scott likes to put this in terms of three key factors: who you are, what you stand for and why you matter. Your goal now is to listen to these individuals and be prepared to share these things (among others) with them regarding their favorite issues: an exchange of meaning, sincerity and value.
Folks, I fear that we stand on the bleeding edge of the next wave of bad marketing. In a word: Occupy. It seems that marketers, running short on new ideas of their own, have decided the time is ripe to replace their Got milk? rip-off taglines with the all-new Occupy _____. Have you seen them cropping up? It’s pretty bad. The most recent one I saw was: Occupy Savings. Ugh. Please stop.
As a freelance strategist with expertise in qualitative research and facilitation, I often get asked to help companies learn more about themselves through dialogue with their employees and customers. One of my specialties, especially in workshop settings, is giving executives or customers the chance to have some fun while I pump them for relevant insights. This often includes art projects and the like, which always gets a rise out of the CFO in the room. “You want me to make a freakin’ collage!?” they say (before going on to thoroughly enjoy themselves).
