lead/marke | ralf schwartz

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > Product Proliferation or "Category Management should include Clarity Management"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Some brands are line extension machines. To jockey for shelf space, they launch waves of new SKUs each year, often without meaningful differentiation from what is already there.

I’m sure there are category management justifications for every niche item, but most supermarket shelves are cluttered and hard to shop. Does Crest really need 40 varieties of toothpaste? Clutter causes confusion and confusion causes paralysis.

I love the refreshing simplicity of Help Remedies. I first spotted the healthcare brand at Duane Reade a couple years ago. Against the clutter of a typical drugstore aisle, they stand out.

Help’s rally cry campaign is “Take Less”: “Everybody in the drug aisle likes to talk about more, bigger, extra, super, and maximum. But we’re not going to talk about that … Help is a new type of drug company—a drug company that promises you less.”

I’d love to see the “Take Less” philosophy in more categories. Category management should include more clarity management.

As HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter observed, “When everyone else suffers from over-complexity, there is a market for products and services that simplify life.”

(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away a signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post. I’ll pick one comment by 5:00 PST on Tuesday. Thanks!)

After drawing this, I remembered I drew a similar cartoon back in 2003, Flanker Madness. Here’s one from the archives.

(ralf says:
Tom mentioning Crest reminds me of my own tooth paste & brush history at GlaxoSmithKline (I was responsible for media strategy not product strategy).

Flanker sometimes make sense, but to do it right is the most difficult to do. If you do not know the benefits of a brush, or your consumers, and their problems, you will fail.

Exaggerations do not make sense at all - which eventually led to my comparison of the brushes' history with that of sneakers: they grew from the most basic tools to some fashionista's gadgets. But the best were still the plain ones (which in the sneakers case we love as 'retro' or 'originals' today.), I guess. Best in the sense of effectiveness, not sales. The best in the sense of product life cycle and profit contribution. Some of them exist even 15 or 20 years later.

"Take less" is my favorite philosophy.

Tom is cartoonist and founder of Marketoonist, helping organizations communicate with cartoons. He draws from 16yrs of marketing, most recently as Marketing VP at method. He speaks about innovation, creativity, and marketing, using cartoons to visualize. @tomfishburne

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > 8 Types of Leader

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > gamification

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:

Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

Gamification is the latest shiny new object for marketers. It’s the practice of adding game dynamics into your campaigns in order to drive participation and engagement.

Badges, points, leader boards, and titles like “mayor” are no longer relegated to Foursquare or Farmville. They are popping up everywhere in marketing campaigns, rewarding consumers for all types of desired behavior.

While the promise is high, most marketing applications I’ve seen have been very superficial, as if gameplay can magically make a non-engaging brand engaging. And as if valueless rewards will somehow be perceived as valuable.

Games designer Sebastian Deterding wrote,

“Gamification proponents consider game elements to be a kind of monosodium glutamate you can just add to any interface, application or service to give it a kick, to make it more fun, motivating, and engagement … Games are not fun because they’re games, but when they are well-designed”

Sebastian expanded these insights in a talk at last year’s Playful conference: “Pawned. Gamification and its Discontents”. Before you try to “gamify” your marketing, his presentation is a good primer to read.

Pawned. Gamification and Its Discontents

View more presentations from Sebastian Deterding

(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away a signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post. I’ll pick one comment at 5:00 PST on Monday. Thanks!)

 

(ralf says: Why shouldn't marketers replicate their mistakes from facebook? Why shouldn't they fill new skins with old wine? That is what they always do - instead of broadening their minds and horizons - eg.)

Tom is cartoonist and founder of Marketoonist, helping organizations communicate with cartoons. He draws from 16yrs of marketing, most recently as Marketing VP at method. He speaks about innovation, creativity, and marketing, using cartoons to visualize. @tomfishburne

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "what would steve jobs do?"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:

Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

Following last week’s news, it is hard to overstate the impact of Steve Jobs on the business psyche. He is arguably the most mythic business leader of our time. It has become almost cliche to reference Apple in a presentation.

Apple and Steve Jobs are used as inspiration in every imaginable industry and domain. Articles have referred to various entrepreneurs as the Steve Jobs of bicycles, of China, of meat (which is particularly funny because the real Steve doesn’t even eat meat). Businesses often ponder, “what would Steve do?”

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "advertising with QR codes"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:

Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

Some marketers are calling 2011 “The Year of the QR Code”, predicting that mobile tagging will become mainstream. Those little black and white tags are popping up everywhere: in billboards, magazine ads, and even tombstones.

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "Evolution of An Idea"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

There is a natural selection to ideas. Ideas can be strengthened or weakened, launched or killed outright. Any organization is a Galapagos of ideas in various stages of evolution.

The Survival of the Fittest law applies too, yet what is deemed “fittest” is in the eye of the organization. Very often, “fittest” means “safest”. Those ideas are smaller than the ideas that are originally conceived.

The best ideas are the product of many touches. In an organization, the lone genius is a myth. Instead, there is a synergistic effect where ideas are expanded or tightened, made bigger or made sharper. We all create and we all critique.

The job for someone championing an idea is not to complain when the climate is inhospitable, but instead to keep advancing the evolution of the idea.

The best approach I’ve seen is to get the ideas out of the organization and into the open, as in small stakes in-market tests. As WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg said, “usage is like oxygen for ideas”. The market and the consumer are better judges of “fittest” than we are.

...

Here’s another cartoon I drew five years ago on the Survival of the Safest.

 

(ralf says:
We have to differentiate between real users who search for value and critiques and pundits who try to impress others by giving early insights, judgements, and opinions.
Be careful who you are listening to. As within the company people outside the company also do have their hidden agendas, which will - out of pure egoisms - not support your ideas and innovation.)

Tom is cartoonist and founder of Marketoonist, helping organizations communicate with cartoons. He draws from 16yrs of marketing, most recently as Marketing VP at method. He speaks about innovation, creativity, and marketing, using cartoons to visualize. @tomfishburne

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "marketing fairy dust"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

There is no marketing fairy dust. Yet. However, we marketers often get excited about the marketing fad du jour.

Kathy Sierra wrote a wonderful post recently called, “Pixie Dust and the Mountain of Mediocrity“. It includes these insights:

“We’re always searching for that secret formula, that magic pixie dust to sprinkle over our products, services, books, causes, brands, blogs to bring them to life and make them Super Successful … why are so many so convinced that [insert favorite buzzword] is the answer vs. just making a product that helps people kick ass in a way they find meaningful?”

Marketing is too often seen as something that happens at the perimeter of a business. Once everything is defined, marketing steps in to magically drive consumers to take products from the shelf. Even if the product experience is undifferentiated and unremarkable.

The most important marketing is indirect and long-term. It’s the hardest to measure, but the most meaningful when done well. This is the marketing that is baked into the entire organization. This is the marketing that makes meaningfully unique products and engaging consumer interactions.

The best marketing breaks the marketing silo. We all work in marketing, no matter what our functional expertise may be. We all impact our products and services and touch consumers in some way or another.

There’s no room to stand on the sidelines with eyes closed. What it takes to make our businesses fly isn’t fairy dust. It’s meaningful involvement from everyone.

(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away a signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post. I’ll pick one comment at 5:00 PST on Monday. Thanks!)

 

(ralf says:
Even more strange: marketing has been reduced to advertising for years now. Because everything else has been taken away by fellow departments in search of excellence, additional responsibilities, bonus opportunities, you know what I mean.

Everybody thought s/he could do marketing, ie. market the thing lying there on the table before them.

1991, in a strategy meeting I attended even before I officially started at GlaxoSmithKline, the marketing director explained that marketing and communication starts as soon as we talk to people outside BEFORE we start to develop the potential product. BEFORE WE EVEN KNEW what the potential product would be!
Everything we did was marketing or - in other words - marketing was the only thing we ever did. Talk to people, listen, create, innovate, deliver.

No marketing fairy dust, but plain business innovation and brand engagement - as I call it today.)

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

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "News of The Brand"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

“Brands must be made into ‘media properties’”, announced Unilever CMO Keith Weed a couple months ago. Keith oversees the second largest marketing budget in the world at $3 billion, so his words carry a lot of weight.

Brands are in the midst of recasting themselves as publishers. This shift conjures examples of self-serving advertorials, which were invented in the Mad Men era. Brands bought advertising and drafted articles to look like independently written editorial, like this toupee advertorial from the 1960s:

Today many brands default to the advertorial model when thinking about content marketing. They go into pitch mode, touting their features and benefits, whether on a Facebook page, a blog post, or an email newsletter. Content is treated solely as a means to sell product. They treat their audience as if their audience is captive.

Yet consumers can see through this in a heartbeat. And audiences are no longer captive. For content to be worthwhile, it must be worth sharing. It must have intrinsic value that is broader than the features of the brand.

When I worked at method, we published a book called Squeaky Green, a guide to detoxing a home. The only time the book mentioned the method brand was on the cover and there were no specific method products inside. The entire method book was about the philosophy of keeping a healthy home, including tips on buying a vacuum cleaner or carpets that don’t off-gas, topics without any direct method pitch.

Writing a whole book made sense because method stood for a purpose, not just a brand promise. It stood for a happy, healthy home. That purpose allowed method to write a book that was broader than cleaning products. We later serialized the content from the book in blogs and social media. Creating content worth sharing helped cast method as a trusted editor.

A content strategy is rapidly becoming a more important part of any brand identity. Morgan Spurlock parodies this shift in his new film, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. His April TED talk is well worth the 20 minute watch, as he makes fun of the world of brand marketing, particularly the evolution to media properties.

 

(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away two signed prints of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post. I’ll pick one comment from my blog and one comment from Facebook at 5:00 PST on Monday. Thanks!)

(ralf says: Brands are still just too proud of being brands. They must become solutions. They must tell stories, must become service, media, and content.

This may sound simple, but it ain't. For some brands (and their managers that is the hardest thing to do. Because all the years they judged them as a means to an end: make sales and profits and earn higher bonuses.

To a more individual, independent, and impatient consumer than ever before brands are much more, and if they cannot prove that, they will be left behind.)

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

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "Social Merit"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Social badges are not merit badges. Yet many brands treat social media as checking a box, rather than making a commitment. There’s a “Like grab” underway to accumulate as many friends, fans, followers, and likes as possible.

Social proof is not necessarily proof of quality. It’s easy for brands to feel encouraged as a campaign generates a few hundred or thousand new “likes”‘ but what do those likes really mean? There’s a campaign mindset to much of social media that prizes quantity over cultivating quality relationships.

Against this confusing backdrop, Joe Hernandez founded Klout to help provide a “standard of influence”. Klout scores social influencers in an effort to provide a quality lens to social media.

Klout founder Joe Hernandes is often asked how to achieve a high Klout score. His answer is a good rule of thumb for marketing in general:

“There are no shortcuts. You have to be yourself, be interesting, be engaging, and be consistent.”

(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away two signed prints of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post. I’ll pick one comment from my blog and one comment from Facebook at 5:00 PST on Monday. Thanks!)

(ralf says: We cannot emphasize often enough the above. And we do often. Some listen, others still fail on implementing.)

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

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "Brand Storytelling"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Most brand storytelling wouldn’t pass the bedtime story test. Yet there’s never been a greater time for brands that can tell a story well.

Content marketing is rapidly becoming a key plank of many marketing plans (now at 33% of the average marketing budget, according to Junta42). However, much of that content, whether distributed in social media or paid media, is not content worth sharing. It lacks intrinsic value.

I enjoyed this post from Mike Sweeney at Right Source Marketing: “Don’t Let the Social Media Tail Wag the Content Marketing Dog”.

“While content marketing efforts are absolutely enhanced via social media marketing, content marketing can happen without social media marketing. On the flip side, social media marketing loses a whole lot of punch without content marketing. Without content, social media marketing stops after 140 characters and only continues when you’re ready to answer the question “What’s happening?” again, or listen to someone else’s response to that question.”

I am learning a great deal about content marketing in the course of my new Marketoonist business. For several clients, I now create a weekly ongoing cartoon as content marketing. Through trial and error, we see immediately which cartoons spread like wildfire and which ones stall. The tricky balance is to be unique, valuable, and relevant, without being advertorial. The cartoons have to touch on customers’ issues, but they can’t pitch features and benefits.  They can’t be seen as advertising.

Poor content marketing reminds me of this classic two-minute scene from A Christmas Story. Nine year old Ralphie gets a Secret Society decoder pin for his favorite Little Orphan Annie radio show. He excitedly translates the secret message, only to find that it says “Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine”. Ralphie stares at the message and says, “Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son of a…”

Content marketing should never come across as a crummy commercial.

 

(ralf says:
Funny thing is most advertisers are deeply convinced their message is the content they have to spread. They do (and will) not understand that content is a service, a solution, a benefit, and value on top of the product itself. But that is crucial!

Relevant content is the secret sauce glueing the consumer to that product, building the brand, adding facets, perspective, value.)

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

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "BrandTube"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

On Friday, I spoke at a social media conference with Aaron Calloway, a brand manager from Axe. He shared the story of the provocative Axe Detailer CYB Campaign, which earned Axe a Cannes Gold Lion and propelled the brand to major growth. It was ranked the single most viral video of 2010.

At one point, Aaron said, “Marketers often say they want to ‘do a viral video’. You can’t just ‘do a viral video’.”

Most things are not viral and you never know in advance what ideas will work. The best approach is to try lots of things and bring the best forward. Aaron described a long journey bringing this campaign to life and the details involved, far beyond the actual 3-minute video.

For every Axe breakthrough success, there are hundreds of brands that put all their eggs in one viral media basket. Or they chase low quality traffic through frivolous gimmicks that are only loosely related to the brand.

Orabrush is a remarkable case study of building a brand through creative video content. You couldn’t pick a duller category. They sell tongue scrapers for oral hygiene. The founder approached a classroom for help and a student created a clever product demo to bring the brand to life. That student product demo achieved 16 million views and this article in TechCrunch:

“Here’s the surprising thing: The video isn’t really that funny. Saying it “went viral” isn’t quite right. People weren’t forwarding this around saying “YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS! LOLOLOL!” People seemed to resonate with the product itself and a desire not to have bad breath. Many viral videos do little more than rack up page views. This one not only sold ten thousands Orabrushes, it spawned hundreds of videos of people using it and showing the camera the gunk that came off their tongues. Another four million people watched those video responses. And a whopping 20% of people who watched Orabrush’s video went to the site, and 5% bought a brush– metrics that have stayed steady over time.”

Orabrush extended this success to a YouTube channel with a weekly video series called “Diary of a Dirty Tongue”. Their channel is the second most trafficked on YouTube with 33 million views. Remember, this is for a company that sells tongue scrapers.

Their head of marketing (the former student who created the first video) credits their success to “the four Cs of authentic content, collaboration with the YouTube audience, consistency and a clear call to action.”

Most branded videos posted to YouTube miss the boat on those four.

(ralf says: The new AIDA: “the four Cs of authentic content, collaboration with the YouTube audience, consistency and a clear call to action”.)

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

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "Innovation Funnel"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Business Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility: Tom - Tim - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

Every company has some form of innovation funnel. The funnel is wide at the front to capture potential ideas and narrows to the select few that launch. Projects progress from the idea stage through design and ultimately to market.

Amazingly, the average new product success rate is less than 10%. So companies spend a lot of time on this innovation funnel looking for ways to boost their hit rate. Most companies focus on the back end. They raise the bar, elevate the hurdles, and tighten the scrutiny, allowing fewer ideas to make it through. They inject more idea killers and sharp teeth into the process.

Yet running a more severe gauntlet doesn’t necessarily lead to better ideas. It can lead to safer ideas, but the added internal review cycles and scrutiny sometimes sand away what makes ideas most unique.

Funnel focus is better placed on the front end. Ensure a heavier and constant stream of new ideas and then find ways to test versions of those ideas in the market. Learn from actual use of the ideas and spend less time in stage gates.

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman shared some entrepreneurial observations recently, including this gem on innovation:

“Launch early. Unless you’re Steve Jobs, you’re most likely partially wrong about what your theory was. So launch early and often. Launching early attracts customer engagement, and it’s the customer who’s going to tell you what’s wrong so you can correct it.”

I think this iterative approach can apply to physical products, not just web products. Betabrand in San Francisco launches a new idea each and every week. Some do well and some don’t, but they learn with small stakes. Small stakes allow them to place frequent bets.

Rather than try to lower the failure rate, lower the cost of failure.

(ralf says:
In most companies the above procedure is derived directly from their (ineffective) strategy & innovation process, thinking, talking deciding just once a year: all brains, man power and commitment are put behind one single meeting, shot, window of opportunity.

But these times are over for good. You cannot manage the new individuality, independence, and impatience of people at just 3 days of 365. You have to live the new life, second by second, day by day.

Changing this will automatically lead to Tom's reco.)

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

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "Like us on Facebook"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Business Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility: Tom - Tim - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The Facebook “Like” land grab is in full swing. Fan acquisition is becoming an increasing part of many marketing plans, in the midst of a lot of debate on the value of Facebook fans. Different pundits are increasingly trying to pinpoint a universal value to fans.

As one observer summarized, “Your Facebook fans are worth exactly $1.07. No, they’re worth $3.60. Or maybe they’re worth $136.38. Unless they’re worthless.”

Setting a value per fan can lead to indiscriminate fan chasing. Many brands seem intent on amassing as many fans as possible, independent of the relevance of the fan. They’re treating fan accumulation as a media buy.

While fans can be bought, it’s important to remember than quality trumps quantity. And simply accumulating fans is only the start.  Developing a relationship is far more valuable.

Hal Thomas posted some useful notes following an SXSW panel on the value of a Facebook fan: “The value of a Facebook fan is ZERO until you do something with them. There is no inherent value in amassing fans.”

The overlooked key to getting fans to like your brand is to be a brand worth liking.

(ralf says: Every marketer should carry the last sentence under her pillow. Nothing to add - just a few quick links: Ooops - the Value of a Facebook Fan is Zero! and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn - When Shall we Three Meet Again? In Thunder, Lightning, or in Rain? and Liebe Facebook-Apostel, ich habe im Bus jemanden “geliked”! and Facebook Fans: Die gute Nachricht ist die schlechte Nachricht! and Engagement & Experience: What are Your "Pentalobular Screws"? - Enjoy!)

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

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "low interest category"

(L/M NET features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

There are no low interest categories. Only low interest brands.

That’s the main lesson I took away from five years at method. Even in a category as mundane as household cleaning products, you can create a brand with deep emotional connections.

Marketers often limit ourselves by the conventional rules of a particular category. When we first join a brand team, we go through an indoctrination process that dispels our previously held beliefs and teaches us the rules of the category. We learn the insider acronyms, the same consumer insights, the shopper decision trees, the tried-and-true promotion vehicles.

The rules of the category blinder and constrain us. They bias us toward the same-old, same-old. Everyone in the category knows the category rules, so the category evolves into a sea of sameness. Defining a category as low interest is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Consumers don’t know the category rules. General Mills CMO Mark Addicks once said that the most valuable members of a brand team are the ones who had just joined, because of their fresh eyes. He counseled us to fill in notebooks with our thoughts and observations before we learned anything about the categories we were about to join. Category knowledge can become baggage.

The rules of the consumer trump the rules of the category.

(ralf says: Not only don't consumers know the category rules, they define their own. And the most important one: there is no formal market definition. Consumers don't know Nielsen, and friends, they just know (intuitively) their own individual, independent, and impatient Informal Markets Matrix. Eg. they are not limited by the company definition of micro-compact cars, they compare them with the bike, the motobike, the bus, train, etc.! Car companies not getting that will fail.)

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

Tom Fishburne > "Return on Indecision"

Note: I get this a lot inside global corporations delegating decisions to the higher paid opinion or center. And at agencies - when they tell me they have to think a little bit longer if they are ready to change their business model already.
Sometimes real pain helps to get decisions faster, but they are not better - made in agony and a rush. ... Enjoy, ralf!
(L/M NET features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

I spent a few days in Vermont last week with Eureka Ranch founder, Doug Hall. At one point, Doug said, “if you’re not meaningfully unique, you better be cheap”.

Any idea that is “meaningfully unique” is inherently risky because by definition you can’t point to a precedent in the market. You have to step into the unknown, which is uncomfortable.

When many companies are faced with the unknown, they freeze. They spend hours debating potential scenarios and are incapable of making the go/no go decision. Sometimes this indecisive period lasts months or longer.

One of my previous managers was king of the debate club method of decision-making. His whole team would war-game scenarios for hours until our craniums hurt and still get no closer to launching our idea. Debate club would reconvene again and again, all while the clock ticked.

Instead of arguing from a conference room table, agree to the biggest areas of risk and frame a few experiments to learn about that risk. Get your idea or a form of your idea into the market as quickly as possible. As WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg said, “usage is like oxygen for ideas”. Once you’ve tested what you can test, bite the bullet and make the decision. There’s only so much you can learn by debating.

Companies measure project return by many dimensions: return on investment, return on capital, return on equity, etc. Return is not just a factor of what projects you invest in, but how you execute them.

There is also a cost to being indecisive.

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

Tom Fishburne > "For Immediate Release"

Note: I remember all those long discussions with all those PR guys ... Enjoy!
(L/M NET features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

PR is called earned media for a reason. You have to earn it. If you earn it, PR can be far more valuable than paid media. But earned media follows different rules than paid media, and certainly different rules than spam.

Some PR agencies forget that the “R” in PR stands for relations. They instead follow the antiquated “For Immediate Release” model (still stamped on old-school press releases). “For Immediate Release” is one-sided mass communication. It’s in the same family as spam.

I cracked up at Wired Editor Mat Honan’s commentary: “Yours is a Very Bad Press Release“.  In the essay, he skewers a particularly bad press release line-by-line and offers this advice:

“We’re the media. We get a lot of press releases. Press releases are almost always bad. Especially those that come to our personal email inboxes. Here’s a better idea: write an email to someone you know will care.”

I talked to a friend recently who shared how much PR has changed in her career. She remembers sending the same generic press kit to a mass list with physical photo slides. That approach used to get big results for news-hungry papers and magazines, many of which would run the quotes and pictures as is. Now the content stakes are raised. The carpet bombing press release tactic no longer works.

There’s never been a better time for great PR agencies. They can create real relationships with those who create the most valuable content to the most relevant audience. They can craft material worth sharing.

But they have to earn it.

PR agencies can learn from Sasha Dichter, one man with no agency but a great idea he wanted to spread. A philanthropist at the Acumen Fund, Sasha hatched an experiment to reboot Valentine’s Day as Generosity Day: “saying yes to everything that’s asked of you, all day long”. Compare how he framed his appeal with the last generic press release you received.

Sasha only came up with the Generosity Day idea a couple days ago. It’s already spread to Fast Company, Huffington Post, and has racked up more than 500 retweets and scores of blog posts, and it’s only Sunday night. Sasha combined a great idea with relationships he’s cultivated. It’s media he’s earned.

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

Tom Fishburne > Your Call is Very Important

Note: Another one of those 'Pentalobular Screws'. ... Enjoy!
(L/M NET features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

I sketched this cartoon while on hold with United Airlines last week. I spent a total of two hours and 12 minutes with United over four separate phone calls trying to get home from New York after the storm, so I had a lot of time to think about service.

Many brands fall down on service. They view it as a cost center. Yet, all the marketing dollars invested in animated TV ads and direct mail mail pieces can be evaporated by a couple bad service experiences.

Marketers dream of having a captive consumer audience. Most brands struggle for attention. United had two hours and 12 minutes of my time. I was captive all right. But as I listened to the George Gershwin United theme song over and over again, I had time to think about all of my frustrations with United (and question just how much that Premier Executive frequent flyer status was worth it).

Of course, bad weather isn’t United’s fault. But, dealing with the aftermath of bad weather is simply part of being an airline. Excelling at resolving situations when things go wrong is part of how any brand is judged.

A few years ago, I interviewed with Apple for a marketing role with AppleCare, their service and support plan. At first, I didn’t see how a service plan was even marketing. But then I realized that the moment Apple products break is exactly the moment that Apple proves itself as a brand. The genius at the Genius Bar or the AppleCare phone operator are front-line brand managers. Those experiences directly drive how a consumer feels about a brand, and what stories they share with others.

If you haven’t seen it already, take a look at Dave Carroll’s music video that captures his rough service experience with United. His experience obviously touched a nerve. The video has been seen 9.9 million times and Time Magazine named it the seventh most viral video in 2009. The Times even speculated that the video and bad PR fallout prompted a 10% stock price drop for United. Service is as much a part of marketing as the four Ps.

 

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

Tom Fishburne > "Mission Statement"

Note: Brand's mission statements mostly come from agencies, brand managers or corporations without a mission themselves. Brands aspiring to sell themselves to everyone appeal to no one. ... Enjoy!
(L/M NET features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

There’s an interesting disagreement between Jim Stengel and Simon Clift, former CMOs of P&G and Unilever: “Who is Right: P&G or Unilever?“. Jim is in the process of writing a book and teaching a UCLA class on the role of purpose and ideals in business. He invited Simon Clift to talk to students last week and probed on the different ideals of two different Unilever brands.

Jim asked Simon how he felt about “the juxtaposition of Dove’s Brand Ideal of improving women’s self esteem with Axe/Lynx’s Ideal of helping geeky guys get the girl, with a “tongue-in-cheek” sexist portrayal of girls?”

Simon doesn’t see a conflict. Jim disagrees: “I totally support that each brand in a multi-brand company needs its own voice, its own Ideal, its own “subculture.” But I feel each brand in a multi-brand company needs to not only live under the parent company’s beliefs and values, it needs to actively trumpet them in its own voice, in its own style. At P&G we had two brands in these very same categories, Olay and Old Spice, and they competed head-to-head with Dove and Axe/Lynx. We found a way to reveal their individual Brand Ideals, or Purposes, in a way that brought to life P&G’s purpose with no inherent conflict.”

Regardless of who is right at a corporate level, it’s clear that those individual brand teams have thought about purpose. That itself is rare. The larger issue in my opinion is that many brands and businesses don’t have a well-articulated value system, mission or purpose whatsoever. Scouring the lookalike mission statements from Fortune 500 companies is laughable reading. Most don’t stop to consider the “why” of what they do. Sure, all businesses have mission statements. But most are meaningless fluff. It doesn’t matter that a mission statement is hung on the wall, painted in calligraphy, or chiseled in stone; a meaningless mission statement is still a meaningless mission statement.

David Hieatt has an inspiring essay on the importance of purpose as he launches a new business and recounts his last business. “You see, as well as love, you need a purpose to really motivate yourself, and therefore succeed. You need to understand the ‘why’ you are doing something.”

David shares a telling video on Raleigh Denim, a young blue jeans brand founded with purpose. Their purpose is so tangible, they hand-sign every pair of jeans with a Sharpie. Signing your work personally is a good sign that you’re making something with purpose.

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

Tom Fishburne > "Social Coupon Bandwaggon"

Note: There are great brands out there who don't even need a coupon! ... Enjoy!
(L/M NET features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

Many marketers asked Santa for a social coupon campaign for 2011. The explosive growth of Groupon and Groupon clones (BuyWithMe, LivingSocial, SocialBuy, and Tippr), offering “ridiculously huge” coupons (50-90% off), is taking marketing plans by storm.

These social coupon sites promise high customer demand in return for a deep discount and a share of the deal. In August, Gap offered a nationwide deal of $50 worth of apparel for $25 through Groupon. Some brands and businesses are offering social coupons directly, including ConAgra, Jack in the Box, and Walmart. However, the biggest participants have been small and mid-size businesses.

But tread carefully before you join the social coupon bandwagon. Running such deeply discounted deals can create a short term volume spike that backfires in the long run. There are plenty of cautionary tales from brands and businesses that didn’t do the math and regretted it.

I spoke to a start-up fashion brand owner recently who said that he’s received dozens of sales pitches over the last few months from Groupon and other social coupon sites. None of them made sense for his type of brand. He sells a premium line of clothing with multiple sizes. He worried such a deep discount would not only devalue his brand but would create a huge inventory challenge, causing him to either build up too much or not be able to supply the demand (how to anticipate whether more coupons would come from customers with 34″ waists or 38″ waists?). But his biggest concern was that a social coupon campaign wouldn’t lead to customers who were profitable in the long run.

Entrepreneur Magazine recently profiled a Rice University study of 150 small to mid-size businesses that offered a social coupon deal with the following results: “while 66 percent of the 150 respondents said that their Groupon deal was profitable, a significant 32 percent found it unprofitable. And 40 percent of the respondents said they would not use Groupon again”.

Marketers should consider any form of deep discounting program carefully. Think about the type of customer you’re attracting because a huge spike in one-time deal hunters who will never pay full-price may not be valuable in the long run.

Social coupons make long term sense if they expose your brand to customers who will want to keep buying from you, even when you’re not on deal. Start with a plan to convert the deal hunters to long term customers.

A brand is ultimately valued by the strength of its long term relationships, not its sales on any one day.

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

Tom Fishburne > The Wiki Wall

Note: I remember everybody quietly laughing about my very early whiteboard, but then they all started dropping in to use it when I was away. Please enjoy!
(L/M NET features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

We can thank adman Alex Osborn for the brainstorm (he’s the O in agency BBDO). In 1948, Alex noted that most offices were full of “discouragement and criticism which so often cramp imagination”. So he invented the brainstorm as a break from the day-to-day office environment. In a brainstorm, ideas could blossom safely before being subjected to critical thought.

Brainstorming helped, but it didn’t address the underlying problem that offices “cramp imagination”.  Ideas don’t conveniently appear in a once-a-quarter brainstorm, just because a group is gathered in a room with beanbag chairs, sticky notes, and those rubber squishy ball toys. Ideas come continuously and in different ways to different people. Some are “slow hunches” that take months to take form. After the brainstorm, all of the flip charts and notes are packed away and the whiteboards are cleaned to make room for the next meeting. There’s no institutional memory.

Another big issue with the once-a-quarter Brainstorm approach is that creative ideas are needed throughout the course of a project, not just at the fuzzy front end. Imagination is needed at every cross-roads, pitfall, and setback. If the office environment is full of too much “discouragement and criticism”, ideas are weakened and made smaller at each of these bumps in the road.

Projects are not the result of one Eureka moment at one point in time. They are the cumulative result of hundreds of minor and major Eureka moments throughout a project.

Instead of escaping the office to go to Brainstorms, we should address the office culture itself. We can make our everyday office more conducive to growing ideas. Instead of calling a brainstorm, build a Wiki Wall. At method, we had floor-to-ceiling magnetic whiteboards on every vertical surface. We called it the Wiki Wall. Ideas are grouped by project. Everyone could add to an idea at any time over the entire course of the project. Pictures and prototypes are added for all to see, comment, and build on. Slow hunches have time to take root.

The Wiki Wall becomes a living embodiment of the project. It also becomes a symbol to the organization of collaborative creativity. It rebels against the clean office policy. I was interested in my last tour of IDEO that it is filled with Wiki Walls. Theirs are rolling partitions that chronicle the evolution of their projects from start to finish.

I’m a big fan of IdeaPaint. They invented a paint that turns any surface into a whiteboard surface. Walls, tabletops, floors, and ceilings are all areas for continuous creative thinking. Their insight is that small whiteboards lead to small ideas.

So do small Brainstorms.

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