lead/marke | ralf schwartz

Engagement: Individuals and Their Online Identities (by Flowtown)

Via flowtown. Click to enlarge.

Engagement: "Are Social Media Better at Destroying Value than Creating it?"

The Harvard Business Review published a - rather strange, I must admit - article a few days ago: "Brands and the Dark Side of Social Media". In a nutshell: 

"Social media are making life difficult for mainstream marketers. Insurgents use so-called "earned" media in place of paid media, creating video ads passed from friend to friend that like to target the imperfections of national brands and the excesses of mass consumer culture. Parodies on YouTube have come to haunt companies. Consider the audience drawn to Greenpeace's targeting Nestle over the destruction of rainforests to grow palm oil, publicity over the lawsuit that North Face brought against the college student who dreamed up the South Butt clothing line, and the tormenting of Toyota by myriad amateur parodists." ...

"So what is a big brand to do when it no longer controls its message, when its complaint anthems are better known than its jingles?"  ...

"Could it be, one shudders to think, that these media are better at destroying value than creating it?"

The author ("John Deighton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and an authority on consumer behavior and marketing, including direct and digital marketing.") seems to be a marketing soldier from long gone Cold War times between brands, corporations, and consumers.

Social Media - or better: Social Networking - ends that war by declaring the consumer has won finally. And that brands may win, too! Social Networking may create Win-Win! situations if handled properly by the corporation.

By being impartial we must admit the world will be a 'better place', when Nestlé stops using the rainforest destructing palm oil. And Nestlé will become a 'better' brand by doing so. What is bad about that?

Social Networking does not destroy relevant value, it does not destroy 'positive' value. It just points a finger at brands and corporations, which are not up-to-date, which still have not understood how the world changed in the last few years.

Social Networking is a wake-up call for those brands and corporations, which have not understood the new independence, individuality, and impatience of consumers around the globe!

There is no "Dark Side of Social Media" - it is for the first time that corporations are able to hear the consumer's voice. Now it cannot be dumbed down by PR and advertising monologues any longer.

This may be frightening, but it is a good thing. Corporations just have to listen. Listen and understand. Understand and act. Act and strive.
And all brands trying from the heart to serve, protect, and empower the consumer will be winning this game. All brands who 'Plug.Play.Win-Win!' will be winning this game.

Finally John has a few tips - I would like to discuss:

01 - "... size now makes you vulnerable, not safe"

No. Not caring makes you vulnerable. Being indifferent, being profit-centered not customer-centered makes you vulnerable.

02 - "... think more about authenticity than how to position the brand"

Yes. Just do not remotely manage and position the brand. Live it. Become a better brand. Learn from customers. Develop. Change. Inspire customers with your Brand Engagements.

03 - "... it is more fun to be an insurgent than an incumbent"

No. Do not "find an opponent bigger than yourself". Find a vision bigger than yourself. Give your corporation, every single employee, a vision worth fighting for.

04 - "... don't rule out ... that social media just aren't for you"

No. Or are corporations convinced, that talking to the consumer is a bad thing, respecting the consumer is a waste of time, money and human resources? Are they convinced monologues are better than dialogues?
Tell me then, why do they develop, produce, and market all that stuff, if it ain't for the present and future wellbeing and wealth of their consumers?

Businesses will need a new perspective on Social Networking - and their business as a holistic whole. They will have to learn, adopt and understand. Then Social Networking will create unbelievable value - for the consumer and the corporation.

UPDATE

15:01 hrs > "Unterschiedliche Strategien ausprobieren und vor allem wachsam sein, um zu wissen, was da draußen los ist - nur dann kann man darauf reagieren und damit umzugehen lernen:
"Life has become a lot more complex and difficult for marketers - but there are numerous exciting opportunities.", Connected Marketing.

June, 3rd

19:28 hrs > Wow, never imagined: nearly 10.000 views of my above post at socialmediatoday :) (June, 25th: smt experiencing troubles due to redesign)

Design: Lego > The Stargate

Via pigtailsandcombatboots.

lead/marke NET: Drew Neisser > "No One Dies in Marketing (7 leadership tips from Kodak CMO)"

Note: If I had to pick one tip it would be 'Create Tension'. Done properly and continuously it's the best you can do for a person, brand or business. Enjoy!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Drew's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

Two days after resigning from his position as Chief Marketing Officer, Jeffrey Hayzlett was still saying “we” when referring to Kodak, a habit I suspect will take some time to break. Speaking with understandable pride after four years of remarkable accomplishments, Jeff answered my questions with an authority that at first left me baffled. Then it hit me. This is not your typical marketing maven. Jeff Hayzlett actually puts the Chief in Chief Marketing Officer.

Instead of talking about ad campaigns, we talked about products and value propositions. Instead of talking ideas, we discussed what a marketing chief needs to do to succeed in a rapidly changing media landscape. Its not that Jeff doesn’t care about ideas, its just that he knows those are by products of performing the CMO job as a true leader, a practice that I have broken down into seven bite-sized morsels for your immediate consumption.

1. Align Goals

Making sure your marketing goals align with the goals of the company seems like a fairly basic place to start but it is amazing how many senior marketers forget this important first step. “A lot of CMOs fail because they forget to get conditions of satisfaction,” offered Hayzlett, who spends a lot of time setting the goals and won’t move forward until he knows what will make his customer (in this case, his boss) happy. Jeff acknowledges that “a lot of CMO’s aren’t even in the C-suite,” which can make nailing down the goals quite a bit tougher.

2. Create Tension

Once your marching orders are clear, Jeff believes the next priority of the CMO is “to create tension in order to encourage more innovative activity.” When reviewing the launch of a new video camera, Jeff created tension “by asking questions no one thought to ask before,” even going so far as to publicly ridicule an alphanumeric product name. “That made some of my people cringe,” acknowledged Hayzlett, whose questions led to a public search for a new name that generated millions of free PR impressions, thousands of entries and one winning name—PlaySport.

3. Act Fast

As we jumped from topic to topic, it was clear to me that Jeff is nothing if not a man of action, and his biggest lament, “wasting time on things that didn’t materialize.” In a period of four years, he was able to launch several successful new products in both B2C and B2B segments, all of which were able to achieve 1st, 2nd or 3rd positions in their respective categories. Jeff noted with glee that 60% of Kodak’s revenue now comes from products that didn’t exist when he started there. When talking about the launch of the naming promotion for Play Sport, Jeff sounded more like the head of racing pit crew, having jumped from concept to execution in two weeks flat!

4. Stretch Budget

It is no secret that Jeff is a huge fan of social media noting that, “It’s a great way to launch a new product and gave us an extreme amount of credibility in the video camera category.” Targeting “every blogger and thought leader,” Hayzlett and his team were able to make Play Sport a strong alternative to category leader Flip without spending a dime on traditional media. As he points out in his new book, The Mirror Test, Hayzlett sees social media as an extraordinary way to connect with consumers and stretch a budget under an umbrella notion he celebrates as OPM, or “Other People’s Money.” Given the low costs, even the smallest businesses can see very tangible returns from social media,” offers Hayzlett.

5. Breakdown Silos

Recalling the extraordinary success that Kodak has had in the ink jet category, Jeff zeros in on how Kodak changed the value proposition in the category, offering reasonably priced ink cartridges to go along with a reasonably priced printer. “When the printing of a recipe is more expensive that the actual ingredients, the consumer knows there is a problem,” noted Hayzlett. Because marketing had a “seat at the table” and participated in the product development process, Hayzlett was able ensure that a strong value proposition was baked into the product, offering a point of difference that made marketing a far simpler task. With the silos broken down, Kodak ink jet printers, according to Hayzlett, “achieved #1 share in some countries.”

6. Take Risks

“No one is going to die in marketing,” offered Hayzlett when discussing the justification for taking risks like playing a video featuring a gray-haired spokesman shouting “booyah” about how Kodak was changing. He went on to note that, “if you want to grow, you’re going to have to take risks. It’s not that Hayzlett is out to offend but as he cautions, “sometimes you don’t know ‘til you try it.” He prescribes “doing it in such a way to minimize the backlash,” and if things don’t work as planned, “its okay to say we screwed up.” Jeff recalls with bravado that his group was fined $500 for not filing a promotional contest in time, a calculated risk that ended up saving his team irreplaceable weeks in program development time.

7. Listen Up

After talking for a good bit, Hayzlett circled back to the importance of listening to the consumer and being “completely transparent.” During his tenure at Kodak, he brought “voice of the customer” to the forefront establishing the position of Chief Listening Officer “to bring scale” to all of Kodak’s social media activities. With a CLO in place, Hayzlett ensured that complaints were heard, questions were answered, comments were responded to and even more PR was generated. “When a consumer tweets ‘they are thinking about buying,’ then we listen and point them in the right direction,” added Hayzlett, whose innovative and authoritative approach to the CMO position at Kodak leaves some pretty big shoes to fill.

Final Note: During his tenure at Kodak, Hayzlett established himself as one of the first “celebrity CMOs,”gaining notoriety on Celebrity Apprentice and extending it with a well publicized book tour. With an army-sized following on Twitter, and a well-established presence in every form of media, I have no doubt we’ll be hearing a lot more from Jeff in the near future

Drew is the CEO of Renegade, the digital & guerrilla marketing agency from New York City that helps clients make more out of less by transforming communications into "Marketing as Service." @DrewNeisser

lead/marke NET: Tom Fishburne > "Shiny New Thing"

Note: One of my core beliefs as consultant is that much too many corporations, agencies, and media carry ADHD! What do you think?
(lead/marke NET proudly features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

(to license this cartoon, click here)

ADHD isn’t just for teenagers. It afflicts businesses and teams too. I once heard a venture capitalist offer to prescribe Ritalin to one of his portfolio companies. 

It’s easy to get distracted by the Shiny New Thing. It’s particularly easy to get distracted when the going gets tough on your core plan and energy starts to wane. Whether it’s a new technology, a new product, or a new customer, falling in love with the Shiny New Thing can take a team off course. It’s easy to get enthusiastic about the promise of something new than the hard slog of what you’re already doing. 

Ted Simon calls this Shiny New Object Syndrome (particularly common with social media):  “In this headlong rush of confusing a tactic with a strategy, organizations waste time, energy, resources chasing a “shiny new object.” By skipping these questions the organization can find itself distracted from its main goal and/or mission.” 

That’s not to say that teams should be inflexible and wear blinders to opportunities that come up mid-stream. Being adaptable to new opportunities is important. But don’t lose sight of the main goal. 

Dharmesh Shah writes a great advice post for entrepreneurs in particular: 

To really succeed and get things done, you’re going to need to stick to something and get the basic machinery “working” and plug away at it. Good ideas take time. Great ideas take even more time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you be stubborn about your idea, business model, product, whatever. Far from it. I’m a big fan of the agile approach to startups. But, there’s a difference between iterating on an existing thing and being distracted by a Shiny New Thing. 

So, here’s my advice to you the next time you see the Shiny New Thing bug buzzing around your head as you’re trying to get real work done. Ask yourself the following 4 questions: 

1. Am I simply intrigued by the shininess and newness, or is there really a there, there? 

2. What would I need to know and what minimal questions would I need answered to figure out whether this Shiny New Thing is worth my attention? 

3. How long will it reasonably take me to figure out what I need to know? Can I even afford that investment? How does it impact what I’m doing now? 

 4. Should I go ahead and….Hey wait! As I was writing this, I just came across another topic for this blog as a result of something on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Must…try…to…resist…shiny…new…thing. Oh no…it’s too…shinyyyyyyyy....[click]

Tom, when not cartooning (eg. for Marketing Week), is method's international managing director. Based in London, he frequently speaks at campuses, companies, and conferences about marketing, cartooning, and how to spread business ideas. @tomfishburne

Brand Engagement: Brian Solis > "Social Media Optimization is the New SEO"

Social Media Optimization is the New SEO with Brian Solis

View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing.

Via Twittwoch.

How to Strive as a Brand in a Society of Continuous Partial Attention?

"From 'I create' via 'I connect' to 'I protect'!" ...
You will find yourself in the presenattion below!

"Today, if your company isn't selling trust, protection, meaning, and quality of life, it will not resonate!"

Understanding Continuous Partial Attention:


May I have your attention please? - Linda Stone - SIME 09 from Ayman van Bregt on Vimeo. Via boingboing.

lead/marke NET: Tom Fishburne > "Quality (out of) Control"

Note: Who stifles innovation, differentiation, variety in your company? Did you think about your own quality control? You will - after Tom's post. Enjoy!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

I’m enjoying Rework, the entrepreneurial handbook by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson, founders of 37signals.  I was inspired to read it after meeting Mark Rohde, who drew all of the illustrations.

One of the brilliant riffs in the book is titled, “Nobody likes plastic flowers”. Jason and David lobby for the beauty of imperfection and advocate the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi. They illustrate wabi-sabi with a wonderful quote by Leonard Koren:

“Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered, but don’t sterilize.”

This flexible philosophy often conflicts with Quality Control, which prizes consistency over “poetry”. The Six Sigma Quality Control movement in particular clamps down on variability.

Strict discipline may be crucial in many forms of product development (otherwise you wind up with the Toyota brake recall). Yet strict quality control standards also sand out the more interesting attributes of product experience. Product development becomes a constant tug-o-war to standardize, not sterilize. How do you write a Quality specification for “poetry”?

When I worked on Häagen-Dazs, we had a lot of internal debates on Quality. We had two US factories, one in California and one in Maryland. The milk came from local farms. East coast milk inherently tastes slightly different from West coast milk because the diet for the cows is different. Yet, our goal was to ensure that West coast ice cream tasted the same as East coast ice cream. Why exactly? Why does Quality Control have to mean absolute consistency? Consumers expect wine brands to taste different from year to year because of crop variability. Why not other products?

Our Mango ice cream created tension because the mango pieces were not consistently sized. Each pint had large pieces and small pieces, as if they were hand-cut, not machine-cut. Consumers liked the variability. Yet, Quality Control wanted to pick one consistent size. It was easier to design a specification that way.

Why can’t mass-produced products accept some variability? Jones Soda features different labels each time you drink them. It is those differences that create drama and interest. Quality is important. But that doesn’t mean that brands should become plastic flowers.

Tom, when not cartooning (eg. for Marketing Week), is method's international managing director. Based in London, he frequently speaks at campuses, companies, and conferences about marketing, cartooning, and how to spread business ideas. @tomfishburne

Business Innovation: Tony Hsieh, Founder of Zappos, on Entrepreneurship

Via Loic Le Meur.

Innovation & Engagement: Marketers - Don't Go Back to Your Comfort Zones!

From AdAge's "Traditional CMO Roles Won't Position Your Company or Your Career for Growth":

"The environment for marketers is changing dramatically. Marketing's leadership in driving business success has never been more in demand, and those who have demonstrably begun to expand mindsets, skills and capabilities are setting the standard.
...

You can similarly improve your impact and reputation in 2010 and beyond while influencing your career trajectory. It's all about starting to undertake one or more of these shifts:

- From defensive back to quarterback. ...
- From innovator to inventor. ...
- From mechanic to driver. ...
- From artist to architect. ...
- From producer to director. ..."

Learn more at AdAge's post.

Engagement & Agility: Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) Video

At leadmarke.de I just replaced this video

with the following one. Enjoy!

Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) from Erik Qualman on Vimeo.

lead/marke NET: Drew Neisser > "Cinco Ideas de Mayo"

Note: Introducing Drew Neisser to the group of great people featured here under lead/marke NET. Please enjoy his thoughts on 'Marketing as Service'!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Drew's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

April was a remarkable month with both Facebook and Apple making game changing introductions while gatherings of characters, developers and CMO’s provided glimpses into the goodness ahead.

1. Learn to Love the Like Button

Make no mistake about it; the Like button from Facebook is a stroke of genius for them and most likely for the online publishing world.  Just in case you missed this momentous land grab, on April 21^st Facebook made its Like button available to all publishers and in the blink of an eye changed how content is shared on the internet. Over 50,000 sites jumped at the opportunity because it is a smart and easy thing to do–so easy that even I could add it to this blog in a matter of minutes.  Facebook is expecting a billion Like buttons to sprout shortly and I’m hard to pressed to think of a site that wouldn’t benefit from this simply yet powerful means of encouraging content sharing.

2. Keep Your Eyes on the iPad

I was at party for iPad developers a few weeks ago and it felt like the late ‘90s again. The party was sponsored by the HR department of Barnes & Noble, who was there trolling for developers – no doubt looking for ways to leverage this new media channel.   The energy and excitement over this new platform is akin to the early days of the Internet.  Simply whip out an iPad and people will flock to you like moths to a flame. A friend of mine recently used an iPad during a sales call and got an hour of quality time with a previously recalcitrant prospect.  Even when the novelty wears off, assuming that happens in the next 12 months, the uses of this device go well beyond gaming as the true business applications are just beginning to be explored.  Sure other “tablets” that promised a B2B revolution have been released before, but none have had the dazzling elegance and enthralling simplicity that Apple brings to the iPad.

3. Tap into the Goodness of Tweeters

Among the many things I gained from the 140 Characters conference in New York last month was a profound sense of hope.  For those of you not aligned with the Twitterverse, the 140 Characters conference assembles 140 interesting people on stage and another 1000+ in the audience to share the good, the bad and the ugly of all things Twitter.  With no PowerPoint crutches, many speakers bared their souls, enlightening us about the good deeds enabled by Twitter, from raising money for Haiti to putting prayers into the Western Wall.  Celebrity tweeters like Anne Curry and Ivanka Trump engaged with the hoi polloi in a remarkably open manner reflecting their belief that “people are inherently good.”  Maybe it’s the “retweet” function that attracts good people to Twitter, but regardless there’s a very strong Pay It Forward substrate embedded into this particular social medium.

4. Follow Twelpforce into Customer Service

As most of the marketing world is contemplating how social media fits into customer service, BestBuy is out there doing it and doing it well via TwelpForce (and I’m not just saying that because I won an iPad courtesy of BestBuy at the 140 Conference!).  Set up over a year ago, Twelpforce is “a collective force of Best Buy technology pros offering tech advice in Tweet form.”  Enter a question on Twitter about technology referencing BestBuy or Twelpforce and you’ll get a well-conceived response in short order.  They even set up their own monitoring/response tool that allows the hundreds of BestBuy employees that make up Twelpforce to respond with answers longer than 140 characters.  It is no wonder that over 25,000 twitterers are following Twelpforce.  If your company hasn’t integrated social media into customer service yet, Twelpforce offers a pretty darn good road map.

5. Channel your Chutzpah

I’ve spent a lot of time with marketers lately, interviewing them for articles and at conferences like The CMO Club Leadership Summit.  Marketers come from all walks of life, many starting in disciplines other than marketing, and the range of approaches to their positions is startling diverse.  Some are heavily analytic, others more prone to shoot from the hip.  That said the one thing that the most successful ones have in common is chutzpah.  They simply aren’t afraid to bend the rules or challenge convention or beg forgiveness in order to get an innovative program out in the market.  When the CEO of Kodak asked his CMO, Jeff Hayzlett, about the ROI of a Kodak social media initiative, Jeff’s response was, “I’ll answer you if you can tell me what’s the Return on Ignoring our customers.”  Now that’s chutzpah!  What Jeff is doing with the Kodak brand is a veritable album of innovation.

Hopefully, the shower of stimuli I absorbed in April will help your ideas bloom in May.

Drew is the CEO of Renegade, the digital & guerrilla marketing agency from New York City that helps clients make more out of less by transforming communications into "Marketing as Service." @DrewNeisser

Engagement & Agility: Quit the Ad Game!

"Over the last few years I've become increasingly less interested in the core concepts of advertising. While so many in our business want to talk about concepts, I fancy ideas. When they speak of campaigns, I push for conversations. And when they boast of impressions, I can't help but think about impacts. At first I thought I was having a mid-life crisis or something. But then I found out I wasn't the only one having these thoughts. I wasn't the only one wanting to have these conversations.

In the last year I've had the good fortune of sitting across the table with lots of clients who wanted to explore this idea of conversations and impacts. And they wanted to pay for ideas instead of concepts. Whether we were doing some kind of private workshop or chatting after a speaking gig, they all understood we are at critical juncture in the history of marketing. We are at a point where interruption must be replaced by invitation.

In short, they were as enchanted as I with this whole notion of having digital conversations with customers and prospects. They wanted to move beyond simply advertising to their customer, preferring instead to connect with them in a meaningful way. And they loved the idea of gaining permission to talk as often as they wanted with a customer without paying for the right to do so each time. Yes, they wanted to talk, but it wasn't about advertising."

Tom Martin in AdAge.

lead/marke NET: Tom Fishburne > "The Emperor's New Tweets"

Note: Tom's post beautifully adds to "No Engagement without a Relevant Product" and "Innovation: Do not build just Products, build Simplicity"!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

In London last week, I happened across Mark Ritson’s column in Marketing Week: “Hoodwinked by the Emperor’s New Tweets”. The title alone sparked this cartoon idea. 

Mark lampoons the social media bandwagon, particularly the herd mentality to incorporate social media into each and every marketing plan and the gullibility of marketing directors to believe all the hype. He writes, “Most brands don’t have the newsworthiness, broad appeal or dynamism to have any chance of making Twitter work for them.” 

 I think that statement is true. And I agree that attempting social media without “newsworthiness” or “dynamism” is simply expensive window dressing. But, I don’t think that this is result of a limitation of Twitter or any other social media platform. I think this is the result of a limitation of the brand. 

Brands have the obligation to be “newsworthy” and “dynamic”. Start there, not with social media. I’m a big fan of a quote from Kathy Sierra: “Please, businesses, don’t DO ‘social media’. Do ‘user happiness’, which may, or may not, require use of social media tools.” Social media will not make a dull brand more meaningful. 

Eric Ryan who founded method in the mundane category of household cleaning likes to say, “There are no commodity categories. Only commodity brands.” It’s the impetus of each and every brand to rise above commodity status. Or it risks becoming irrelevant next to cheaper private label. 

Only once a brand is truly meaningful to consumers does it earn the opportunity to have relationships with them. And I believe those relationships often can be made stronger through the use of social media tools. 

Tom, when not cartooning (eg. for Marketing Week), is method's international managing director. Based in London, he frequently speaks at campuses, companies, and conferences about marketing, cartooning, and how to spread business ideas. (twitter: @tomfishburne)

Communication Agility: "The Science of Word-of-Mouth" Graphic

Via hiten. Via Smash Summit.

lead/marke NET: Adrian Ho > "Setting the Agenda"

 (lead/marke NET proudly features Adrian's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

I was inspired by one of Ashley’s comments in my last post. She said:

“But the criteria of what makes something ‘good’ (design, social, health, energy use) is still being defined and led by the specialist or ‘passion’ sector. Big brands are more in the position to enforce and execute.”

It got me thinking about the setting of “the agenda.”

It’s well known that a strategy of leaders - or those who would be leaders - is to set the agenda or “rules” for a category thereby forcing everyone else to follow and measure themselves against you. The increase in transparency that has been brought about by technology and social media as well as the rise of the participatory culture have created some new ways for companies to set the agenda. Ways that benefit both small companies and corporations, but differently.

 

For example the fact that public opinion and public demand are now such vital forces in shaping categories has greatly benefitted companies like Netflix who have used their customers’ desire for streaming to force a host of fairly radical agreements with many of the studios. This has enabled Netflix to set the agenda in the video rental business, it’s not about physical retail locations, nor physical media; it’s about immediate access to the widest variety of films possible.

Conversely the increase in transparency within corporations as a whole and the increase in the public desire to know more about the companies with whom they do business, has benefitted companies like Walmart who turned an employee sustainability and wellness program into a marketing vehicle and one of the first steps in, what has now become, a heralded commitment to sustainability. It allowed Walmart to claim that scale and impact are the defining criteria in being green, that it’s better to cast a wide, but light, green shadow than a small but deep green one.

I think this is interesting because it is another point that supports a growing hypothesis of mine that modern branding which has been pioneered by small companies is being adopted by big companies with a twist. What do you think? How else can companies set the agenda, am I missing something?

Adrian is founding partner of Zeus Jones a branding company believing actions speak louder than words and that modern brands are defined by what they do not what they say. He speaks (and writes) regularly about non-communications based models for marketing & branding. @adrianho

No Engagement without a Relevant Product

Yesterday I talked with a guy from the automobile industry. We agreed about Ford Sync being a great idea and the right step forward for the brand ...

Steve Beck (in AdAge) supports the underlying basic idea: "Digital technologies have fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with each other and, by the way, with brands. The role of engaging brand stories has not gone away. However, to truly establish loyalty and advocacy -- the holy grail of marketing in the digital age -- our marketing and brand strategies need to go beyond telling great stories. We have to make marketing focus on how products or services are actually used, not on how we hope they are used. We have to make them more useful by wrapping them in applications that increase their usefulness to the consumer."

... but we also agreed that Sync will not help sales - if Ford does not supply a better product, a better product experience, some real product innovations and not just more power, some gimmicks, and gadgets, some social media stuff. And that is true for all the auto industry.

That is true for every brand and product (as Steve continues in AdAge): "The product or service has always been the most important part of a marketing effort. No communication strategy can make a long-term success out of a sub-standard product. Despite that, the product and the marketing have long been seen as separate things. This doesn't work anymore because the communications cornucopia makes it increasingly difficult to get customers' attention. Today the product itself has become the primary advertising channel -- it convinces people based on its utility to them."

Engagement: 20 Least ReTweetable Words

Via ConversationAgent. From Dan Zarella's presentation, page 16:

The Science Of ReTweets

View more presentations from Dan Zarrella.

lead/marke NET: Charles Frith > "David & Goliath"

Note: A slightly older post introduces Charles to the group of great people featured here. A post illuminating his spirit, I think. Please enjoy!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Charles' inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

Somebody on the Linkedin Planners page asked a question.

"Do you need a British accent to be a good planner?"

For fun I answered it. So this is a cut and paste job from last night though I'm even more pleased that I found a Carravagio to portray the drama.

The answer is no, but it helps. A better question would be why do British planners do so well? London is the home of planning so there's some heritage equity there. The accent has some Hollywood stereotypes. Villainous, Effete or Intellectual. All three help. Then there's the way the accent commands attention. I once read a script to a C Suite in Germany and the CEO said 'shit that sounds so much better in English'.

But the real value of a British accent. And this is my hypothesis after watching American Planners in action, is that we have a pattern of inadvertently telling the unpalatable truth. One only needs to say Should George Bush be up for war crimes? Do Corporations commit ecocide? Are sales the only benchmark for great advertising? and there's a collective bowel movement around the meeting table.

By the time the speccy Brit has shuffled out the room; maybe, just maybe, someone switched-on recognises it's not all about saying awesome all the time but about being a bit uncomfortable.

Eternal optimism does indeed rock. But rock throwing is eternal.

Ask David.

Fuck it. Ask Goliath.

Charles is a creative planner in the advertising business. He is based in Asia where he has worked for agencies as distant as Beijing and Singapore. He has a popular advertising blog in which he shares his day to day life and latest digital thinking. (@charlesfrith)

lead/marke NET: Tom Fishburne > "Poking the Bear"

(lead/marke NET proudly features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

“Poking the Bear” belongs on a marketing lingo bingo card alongside “Low Hanging Fruit” and “Share of Voice”. It’s one of my favorite marketing buzz phrases because it’s so vivid. “Poking the Bear” means going up against a competitive giant knowing the potential response will be massive. 

Schwans innovation guy Marc Coudeyre, who I knew at General Mills years ago, suggested “Poking the Bear” could make a good cartoon. He said that companies often cautiously “Yell at the Bear” through soft launches, etc. before they actually work up the courage to poke it. 

The most common action that I’ve seen is that organizations are afraid to confront the bear at all, particularly if the bear is a powerful market leader. The phrase “Poking the Bear” is often used as a watchword on what to avoid. If you’re the little guy, the Bear can be pretty intimidating when it throws its weight around. 

Many of these companies take the “roll over and play dead” approach, the equivalent of staying under the radar. But this strategy is actually more dangerous. The big competitors hunt indiscriminately and playing it safe actually makes you an easier target. 

As the challenger brand, the only way to win is to catch the incumbent off-guard, using your natural advantages of speed and creativity to keep the Bear on its toes. 

And the best way to poke the bear is by aiming at the funny bone. Recently Clorox swatted tiny rival method with a cease-and-desist letter for using a daisy image method had been using since 2003 and Clorox started using in 2008. The threat of litigation can be frightening for small companies, and many opt to “roll over and play dead”. Method decided instead to poke the bear back. 

They used humor to turn the cease-and-desist letter into a very public campaign called Vote Daisy. 

As howies founder David Hieatt said after getting sued by Levis, “you can’t slay a giant but you can help him get his sense of humor back.”

Tom, when not cartooning (eg. for Marketing Week), is method's international managing director. Based in London, he frequently speaks at campuses, companies, and conferences about marketing, cartooning, and how to spread business ideas. @tomfishburne