From The Rooftops

The Next (Worst) Campaign Frontier

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?

-Scott

The Power of Storytelling: Try This!

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.

-Scott

Finding Inspiration in the Needs of Others

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

Action Marketing

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.

- Caleb

Giving your fans a voice

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.

-Scott

Social Media as a Factor of Branding

Everything new is old again.

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

Making Value: Brands and Social Media

Lately I’ve had several organizations seeking out help with their “social media strategy.” As I spend more and more time explaining these things I’ve started to initiate the process by asking a series of questions: who is your customer? who is your brand? where do they meet? why?

Ultimately this hinges upon one observation: we seek out and sustain connections in the social web in order to create value. This is an oft-stated thesis, but an important one nonetheless. My goal today is to briefly introduce how and why this is and how it relates to brands.

a glimpse at life in the Clif Bar breakroom

In the brand strategy world we often encourage a client to “let the brand drive the decision process.” This brand-based thinking is also very useful in the social media world. If your brand makes rubber gaskets for industrial widgets it’s probably more important that you have a solid blog (and Twitter account) that enables you to discuss industry trends/topics related to your customers and their up- and downstream needs than for you to have a Foursquare mayorship incentive or a Facebook page with giveaways. If your washer brand is based upon integrity, quality, service and price and your customers are industrial widget makers, then you’ll probably want to use your social web presence to enhance their experience of you and your brand: respond promptly to customer input, share behind the scenes content that enhances your brand and its story. Use it as a means of differentiation: put up that funny photo of the time the account manager’s dog got into the breakroom leftovers. Have your senior product designer put up a technical blog post that shares R&D information about how and why the new line of washers is superior to the competition. Post a write-up of the company’s Relay For Life team. Don’t try to get Justin Bieber to tweet about your product. The supply chain manager mightn’t care if you have a Facebook “like” button on your homepage, but you might build a closer connection with them if they come across the Relay For Life post and see that there are people behind the email addresses with which they interact. Whatever you do, make sure it’s valuable: simultaneously in service to the brand and the customer’s needs.

Seeing as it’s the social web, there is even more potential for socially-oriented brands. If you have a brand that cultivates supporters, this is a great way to solidify that relationship and turn them into evangelists. Again, this is done by utilizing your social media efforts to be valuable. Give them a behind-the-scenes peek at the brand they love. Save them time and money. Share content they care about. Give them something exclusive that rewards them for reaching out to your brand. Be fun. The tricky part is understanding how customer needs and expectations interface with the brand. There is no ready solution to this challenge—no “app for that”—only active listening and earnest interaction. That being said, the process is moved along greatly if you make sure to “let the brand drive the decision.” As someone who loves consumer insights and digital ethnography, I speak from experience when I say that there is MUCH that can be learned about your business by working with the people who evangelize it. They are, after all, the very reason you do what you do. They love what you stand for—the way you make them feel—talk with them about it. Find out what more can be done.

There are several factors that you must keep in mind when constructing a social media strategy. A few important ones:

• Objectives – what is your desired outcome? (and don’t just say “more money!”) More brand impressions? A 10% increase in sales of product X over the next 60 days? More followers on Twitter? More blog comments? Improved clickthrough from the point of first contact to the product page? More positive ratings on Yelp? The first mistake that brands make is to step into the social web without a coherent strategy and set of desired outcomes. Make a strategic plan and work from there. Revisit it frequently. Make mistakes, own up to them, learn, improve.
• Available resources—Be honest with yourself: do you have 5 hours a week to do all the requisite legwork to keep a sustained and engaging presence online? 10 hours? 1 hour? Your social media strategy is better served by 2 hours of precise, effective and well-aligned efforts than 5 disoriented hours of standing in front of a “firehose” of digital information. Many organizations are tempted to hand it all off to a “Social Media Intern,” but I’ve always encouraged a reexamination of this. Would you leave an intern in charge of your press releases, customer service calls, sales generation, media relations, copywriting and branding? Of course not. The social web calls for strategic thinking and execution. Invite all the appropriate parties to the table for strategic planning and work from there. If you have an intern and you think you need to spend 20 hours/week executing this plan, you need to involve them in the whole process. Find someone who has what it takes to be a director-of-social-media-in-training and groom them for the big time. If you treat the social efforts as being that thing that the intern does between getting the mail and replacing the coffee filter, you’re going to get what you paid for.
• Creativity—One of the things that I love about the social web is how much room there is for innovation. It’s wide open, folks; you can do more than just self-promote and give away swag—take this as an opportunity to refine and demonstrate your brand promise and identity. A couple examples of interesting (though not necessarily recommended) initiatives:
  • Skittles changed the front page of their website to simply display any and all tweets that had “Skittles” in the title. …with interesting results.
  • Air New Zealand asked trivia questions about New Zealand and got over 4,000,000 organic brand impressions.
  • Jimmy Choo’s exclusive and high-end Foursquare treasure hunt encouraged fans to seek out destinations that were a part of the fashion scene.

OMG, I'm FAMOUS!

These campaigns all come back to that recurring theme of value as a factor of branding. Skittles, who for so long encouraged us to do the impossible act of tasting rainbows, opened their front door and enabled us to do the impossible: instantly find ourselves on the front page of Skittles.com. Jimmy Choo offered a way for high-end customers who care about fashion to use their smartphones to more readily hone their visibility on that very scene, all by virtue of being encouraged to interact with a brand that thrives in the space.

You can see how this value-building process is delicate: it would make little sense for an elite, niche brand like Jimmy Choo to open up their front page to a Twitter search, and Skittles would be tremendously off-brand if they were to send you on a treasure hunt among fancy shops selling $200 T-shirts. A brand must first understand their customer and how their customer wants to interact, then brainstorm–come up with a fun, surprising and meaningful way to make that happen. Try it. Don’t worry about figuring out if you’re doing it right; you’ll know because they’ll tell you.

- Caleb

Adobe v Apple (via Caesar)

I recently came across a blog post by Olivier Blanchard that combined two of my abiding passions: marketing/business and ancient Roman history. Blanchard drew 10 business/marketing/leadership/etc. insights out of the legendary personality of Roman General and Dictator Julius Caesar. As someone who also follows the tech world, I found a valuable tie-in to the recent goings-on in the Apple vs. Adobe saga and I shared a comment to that effect. This matter, however, has still got me thinking about the future of the web and how simple and shrewd Adobe’s response seems to be.

For those who need some background on the whole Apple vs. Adobe matter, you might want to go here. Back? Alright, good. Clever, eh? Adobe got tons of positive publicity for their response and we can see why: it’s simple, fun and speaks to much of the criticism that is increasingly being leveled at Apple for, among other things, their heavy-handed approach to controlling the app store and the way in which users (and developers) can engage content.

Here is the very clever (fake) response that was crafted by @issaco:

Adobe is in a weaker position: their product, Flash, is at the heart of this controversy and in the opinion of many people, it was/is always a little too buggy and resource-intensive. …but it is widely used and incredibly flexible—it served an important need to the internet at a certain time and place. I don’t think I’m going far out on a limb to say that Flash is in a tight spot with the popularity of iPads and iPhones making web designers think twice about resorting to Flash for their websites, not to mention the 400 pound (it’s not 800 pounds yet, but it’s growing) gorilla on the horizon: HTML5. Adobe has even gone so far as to acknowledge this business threat in recent SEC filings, as discussed by engadget.

Because of this, it’s wise for Adobe to take a conciliatory open market tone, since it gives them a position from which they can either graciously bow out if and when HTML5 renders it nearly obsolete, or a means to reassert themselves (however unlikely) after winning a fair fight against yet another contender.

Here is my comment:

A key point that I’ve always taken away from Caesar’s savvy political (PR) toolkit is: to play for keeps but, nonetheless, be gracious with your competitors.

Over the course of Caesar’s military career and political ascendancy he made a great effort to be (or at least appear) a magnanimous victor. Throughout his military conquests the leaders of the losing army (or even the Senate!) would often expect to receive very harsh treatment (death, torture, expulsion from Rome, etc.) and, with the exception of his triumphal celebration over his defeat of fellow Romans, Caesar usually responded with open arms and fraternal love. This beneficence was received by the public as being indicative of a strong leader who was generous to a fault. In those bloody times they ate it up…

Let’s apply this for a moment: Look at Adobe’s recent response to all of the vitriol it has been receiving from Steve Jobs and Apple. They got tons of positive press and, on a certain level, affection from the tech world for responding to Apple’s hostility with a more cooperative and open message. With public sentiment as on-edge about tech firms having a distinct shortage of old-fashioned probity (for instance: Facebook overstepping its boundaries, Google inadvertently(?!) retaining user information, Apple refusing to sell a disabled woman an iPad when she only had cash, etc.), this was a smart move on Adobe’s part, and a welcome departure.

Ultimately, Caesar’s shrewdness and ability to curry public favor in the face of hostile challenges was, I believe, one of the many lessons that he passed on to Octavian and allowed Augustus to steer Rome out of the civil wars and (for better or worse) onto the track of Imperial rule that would ultimately see it conquer much of the known world. While this one kerfluffle won’t be garnering any triumphal arches for Adobe, it is certainly a move to be studied and celebrated.

Alright, yes, I did just compare the tension between Adobe and Apple to the epic civil war that surrounded the demise of the Roman Republic … overdramatic? Certainly. A good excuse to pull out my pleasure reading in the name of “work”? Damn straight. I think there are some merits to this, though, if only to give me cause to share the back and forth and allow us to revel in a smart response on Adobe’s part and a brilliant (fake) rebuttal.

But you can see why this matters. In their open letter on the matter, Adobe’s co-founders, Chuck Geschke and John Warnock write:

Adobe’s business philosophy is based on a premise that, in an open market, the best products will win in the end — and the best way to compete is to create the best technology and innovate faster than your competitors.

Many generals (and business leaders) understand this fundamental dynamic: be the best and the fastest, or be done. With HTML5’s writing on the walls, this statement allows Adobe to subtly acknowledge that Flash mightn’t be the best product any more, but restating that the decision is for the market to make, not Steve Jobs. Just as Caesar often made broad gestures appealing to the will of the people, Adobe’s shrewd efforts have effectively tried to extract the (sizable) challenges facing Flash from the heavy-handed ‘technocratic’ knockout punch that Steve Jobs keeps trying to lay upon them. Though I don’t envy their position, they are wise to shift the field of battle such that the decision is placed back in front of a public who is feeling increasingly wary of their tech decisions being made for them. -Caleb

Branding Insights for Start-ups

This weekend, I was fortunate enough to participate as an “expert” in an immersive event for idea-stage companies called LaunchPad. My contribution was as a member of the Branding/Marketing panel, and I was lucky enough to get to sit alongside some great marketing minds, including: Brent Hieggelke, the founder and President of Second Porch; Ken Westin, the founder and CEO of GadgetTrak; and Peter Weiss of Weiss Ideas.

Finding the time and money to be an effective marketer is obviously a huge challenge for start-ups and their founders, but I can’t think of any part of business that is any more important. And if I had to summarize my contributions to the discussion in one key nugget, it would be MAKE YOURSELF AVAILABLE. Success in PR, social media, and buzz-worthy publicity all come back to this concept, and it’s especially critical in a start-up where cash is tight. If you act like Ken (who is brilliant at getting media coverage on both the local and national level) you WILL get noticed. Ken is always looking for newsworthy items to share and will give the media ACCESS any time of day or week. By opening up and sharing your story with the world you will attract fans and friends, whether you’re selling anti-theft software or hi-tech toilet bowl cleaners.

A few other relevant thoughts from my start-up words-of-wisdom notes:

Q. What are the top three strategies you see as having timeless effectiveness in [the field of branding/marketing for start-ups]?

Q. What is the one thing every early stage and idea stage company can do to increase the effectiveness of their Marketing, Branding or PR efforts on a shoestring?

How to use Social Media to build a small business brand

I had an interesting conversation this evening with Lisa Peyton, the founder of the Thoroughly Modern Marketing blog, about how to use social media marketing to build your brand as a small business. In a nutshell, this is what I told her:

1. Keep it real.
2. Keep it relevant.
3. Keep it meaningful.

But to expand, here’s what I was thinking:

Keep it real. By that I mean, be YOURSELF. Don’t be all corporate or attempt to be overly professional in your posts on social media channels like twitter, facebook or LinkedIn. Be human. People want to engage with people, not with these false identities known as businesses. If you’re a small business, customers probably like the people that make your business work. Embrace your people and their unique personalities. Yes, that means occasionally tweeting about what you had for lunch, but see points 2 and 3 for more on that!

Keep it relevant. To the extent possible, stay within your sweet spot. Tweet about things that you know. If your business sells shoes, find compelling and unique content about shoes and share it. This can establish category expertise and ensure that your audience looks to you for the latest relevant information on shoes. The point here is to establish yourself or your brand as a voice in the category.

Keep it meaningful. Relevance only gets you so far if you’re not adding insightful points of view to the content. Relevance might get you ‘followed’ or ‘friended’, meaning gets you contacted. Stand out from the crowd by connecting the dots for people. Teach, share, and add value. Retweeting, for example, can be relevant. Overlaying a point of view can create meaning, as can engaging in REAL dialogue in these channels. If I look at your brand and see that you’re blasting one-way messages without much interaction, you’re not creating meaning.

-Scott