From The Rooftops

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

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