Marketing Conversations: Listen & Speak. Repeat.

Photo: Kimberly Faye

Peter Kim, whose eponymous blog can be counted on for smart insights and analysis, recently posted about the need to take the use of social media by brands to the next evolutionary level. His big points (which I totally agree with) are:
- Brands are using social media to be disruptive and get attention, but aren't using it to create relationships with their customers.
- Ad agencies are using social media the same way they've always used the web, as something scotch-taped onto their "real" campaign. Still clueless about real integration.
- As the Cluetrain Manifesto pointed out 10 years ago, companies are still clinging to the notion that employee, customers, partners, vendors, are all separate markets. They're not. Not only do the boundaries often overlap (employees are also customers, clients might also be partners) but these markets want to talk to each other. And those conversations are the ones that companies need to be enabling and participating in, if they're going to be competitive and survive.

Chris Hall referenced this post in his blog, but I think he may have missed the point a bit when he admonished online blogger and twitterer activists from "imposing their collective wills upon millions of other group members because they have realized that they have a platform."

First of all, I'd like to know how he assumes that this "vocal" minority doesn't speak for the majority. And second, taking a step back and considering the historical context, might provide a better insight into what's happening now, and what we, as marketers, should be doing to bring value to the conversation.

Of course, I had an opinion about all of this, and responded the following on Chris' blog:

I think what we’re witnessing is the messy business of evolution. For years (actually, forever), consumers had no voice. Marketing that drove the sale of products was a one-way conversation. They spoke, we listed. Recourse for complaints was limited to boiling your blood pressure trying to reach a human in customer service, sending a letter that, if you were lucky, got a form-letter reply, or boycotting the product which provided little beyond depriving yourself of something you probably needed.

Web 2.0 gave consumers a voice and the audience to speak to. Heady stuff for a group kept silent for so long. So it’s not surprising that anyone who got a little taste of the power of the pulpit could sometimes be a little indiscriminate in its use. Who hasn’t seethed at the cable industry’s arrogance, incompetence, and unapologetic disinterest in customer relationships? So bravo to the guy that recorded and YouTubed his cable service repair guy napping on the sofa because he’d been on hold with the home office for so long that he’d just dozed off. And bravo to the Motrin Moms for finally voicing the anger of so many women at Madison Avenue’s often reductive and insulting attempts to portray the complex balancing act that women who are some combination of wives, mothers, and workers, have to pull off.

It’s also not surprising that companies are reacting by sometimes overreacting. They’re not used to hearing from the great world that lives on the other side of the tv screen. Those nameless, faceless “target demos” who make up their customer universe. It must be a little scary to hear their voice after all these years.

I think, as marketers, consultants, and advisors, it’s our job to help both sides understand this new context. Motrin missed a huge opportunity to engage with this group of angry moms. As the incredibly prescient Cluetrain Manifesto guys (Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, & David Weinberger) wrote, way back in 1999(!), “Markets are conversations. People are speaking to each other in a powerful new way. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.”

Instead of their knee-jerk reaction, Motrin should have started a real conversation. What were the specific things about the ads that offended women. If this isn’t the right way to portray them, tell us what is? How do these women see themselves? What are the important things in their lives?

It’s not a matter of simply listening. Conversation is an exchange of information, thoughts and ideas. The last word goes to Cluetrain: “The community of discourse is the market. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.”

What's your opinion?
Photo: Kimberly Faye



marketing, social media ,social networking, cluetrain manifesto

There Must Be a Pony

I don't think there's much argument that 2008 was an annus horribilis of the first degree. Apart from the truly historic election of Barak Obama as the first black president of the United States, I'd be happy to have everything else wiped from my hard drive.

One might think that there's little room for joyful thought in wrapping up such a relentlessly miserable year. But there are some who can find a silver lining in even the gloomiest scenario. There's an often repeated story about a young boy who was such an audacious optimist that, when presented with roomful of horse dung, he grew ecstatic. When he was asked the reason for his seemingly inappropriate joy, he exclaimed, "With all this horse shit, there must be a pony."

That kid is clearly not related to me. But, as part of my 2009 resolution to be more of a glass-half-full sort of person, I will say that even though the vast expanse of horse poop covering most of 2008 doesn't excite me, it turns out some of that manure really did signify a pony. Or three.

So, in no particular order, here are three things from 2008 that make me want to say, giddy-up:


1. The iPhone App Store.
Oh. My. God. I get dizzy from the sheer number of possibilities. Solutions for problems you haven't even thought of yet. Utilities to accomplish everything you've ever wanted to do, except, perhaps, one to help you tell the 12 year old HR assistant who just pink-slipped you what circle of hell to go inhabit.

There are over 10,000 apps available, and users have downloaded over 300 million of them, which would indicate I'm not the only one gone ga-ga for them. But with that sort of tsunami of interest and usage, it sort of begs the question, why aren't brands making better marketing use of them? Like desktop widgets, iPhone apps can be an extremely effective and inexpensive way to reach users, provide them with branded utility, and interact with them. Yet, only a few brands have jumped into the iPhone pool and many of them still seem to be tone-deaf to the interactive music of applications.

Michael Arrington's Sept. post about the app, Sonic Lighter, in TechCrunch, illustrates this perfectly. It seems Zippo is offering an iPhone app of a virtual lighter. You can choose from limited lighter designs, flip the lighter open, blow on the flame and see it flicker, and make the flame tilt. Even though the app is free, one use and you've exhausted its fun potential. In contrast, Sonic Lighter by Smule selling at .99 is a bargain at twice the price. Smule has cleverly recognized and tapped into our innate desire to connect which is driving the explosion and popularity of social networking sites. Sonic lighter users can opt to share their location information and have their "Kilojoules" (time spent burning your lighter flame) illustrated on an map of the earth. The map also lists rankings by geography, creating the potential for competitions. Oh, and you can also use your lighter to ignite another iPhone lighter. As Arrington points out: "Unlike its competitors, it’s effectively leveraging location awareness and social networking/human team building instincts to create a bit of a phenomenon. The result is a viral spread."



2. Twitter
Yes, I know Twitter debuted in 2006. When I signed on in late 2007, it had already had it's big coming-of-age at SXSW. But it was really this past year that the tool finally became an important two-way communication channel for brands and people. In April, Michael Arrington (What's with all this Arrington love? Must broaden sources.) wrote the now-famous blog post about his experience with Comcast on Twitter. With the ability to monitor the conversation about their business, companies are turning customer service into customer first response. The typical scenario of public whining about a company's missteps can now have a different ending.

In an article this past September, Business Week noted that Dell, GM, Kodak, Whole Foods, and H&R Block have also established Twitter accounts to communicate with consumers. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos uses his Zappos Twitter account to communicate directly with consumers, letting them know what city he's in, where he's speaking, and posting occasional contests, turning the position of CEO into the company's envoy to the people.

For me, personally, the tool has been invaluable. I have found a wide range of articulate and insightful people to follow and interact with. I've met and become friends with people whose live intersect with mine, but whom I never might have met in the real world. Like life, Twitter is sometimes brilliant, often surprising, sometimes mundane, but never, ever boring.


3. Crowdsourcing & Geospatial Web
In a June 2006 article in Wired, Jeff Howe wrote about "distributed labor networks using the Internet to exploit the spare processing power of millions of human brains". He called it crowdsourcing.

"The open source software movement proved that a network of passionate, geeky volunteers could write code just as well as the highly paid developers at Microsoft or Sun Microsystems. Wikipedia showed that the model could be used to create a sprawling and surprisingly comprehensive online encyclopedia. And companies like eBay and MySpace have built profitable businesses that couldn’t exist without the contributions of users."

Online ventures built around the concept of crowdsourcing have only gotten stronger, from YouTube and iStockphoto, to the online film production social networking site Massify, which, in a project that used the collaborative efforts of film fans and filmmakers, is creating the first crowdsourced film.

All well and good, you say, but old news. Well, it turns out, there's not only wisdom in crowds, there's buried treasure. The most recent issue of Release 2.0 considers the impact of adding of location-based information - the GeoWeb to the already valuable and potentially lucrative predictive abilities of collective information. The most recent example of the resulting functionality of this is Google Flu Trends. It seems that people suffering the first symptoms of flu use search as a first pass at self-diagnosis, typing in terms like "flu symptoms" before they finally shlep themselves to a doctor. The smart folks over at Google noticed clusters of the search terms appearing and researched five years worth of flu symptom keyword search data, which they then mapped against Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports. The resulting findings showed a strong correlation between increased geographic based searches and actual outbreaks of influenza and other similar illnesses. What makes this application all the more important is that Flu Trends beats the CDC reports by about 2 weeks. As the New York Times reported:

"In early February, for example, the C.D.C. reported that the flu cases had recently spiked in the mid-Atlantic states. But Google says its search data show a spike in queries about flu symptoms two weeks before that report was released. Its new service at google.org/flutrends analyzes those searches as they come in, creating graphs and maps of the country that, ideally, will show where the flu is spreading.

The C.D.C. reports are slower because they rely on data collected and compiled from thousands of health care providers, labs and other sources. Some public health experts say the Google data could help accelerate the response of doctors, hospitals and public health officials to a nasty flu season, reducing the spread of the disease and, potentially, saving lives."

Cool, huh?
So I'm thinking that 2009 has the potential to be great. Granted, we've been pounded into such a deep hole that any glimmer of light would be a huge improvement. But I'm thinking that we're going to go way beyond that. It was the power of social networking and collective influence that brought Obama into office - our collective influence. Hmmm, just imagine what we can all do if we put our minds to it.


marketing, brands ,app store, twitter,collective widsom, crowdsourcing, geoweb

Copyright Infringement or Marketing Coup?

"Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free." Is there any woman whose mother has not offered some version of this advice, generally preceded by "Remember!" and followed by, "Don't say I didn't warn you." Inevitably, this advice was ignored on a universal scale. Much was given away for free with, arguably, no impact on livestock sales, or marriage, depending on your tolerance for euphemism.

This phrase popped into my head while reading about Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google's YouTube. The company claims that YouTube is liable for damages for allowing unauthorized viewing of their programming. Does Viacom really believe that the user-published 2-5 minute clips of Jon Stewart's Daily Show, or MTV award show performances are stealing network viewership?

A recent 5-minute clip of a Daily Show segment posted one week ago has been viewed nearly 25,000 times and got 48 viewer comments. That's 25,000 people who have been exposed to a brief clip of the humorous content of the show. They can watch it on demand, replay it, develop an interest in the show, and pass it on to friends. What's more, the video post aggregated the YouTube identities of 48 people who felt strongly enough about it to post their thoughts, giving Viacom the opportunity to communicate directly with them. Isn't that kind of brand interaction a marketer's dream?

I think someone is giving Viacom bad advice. They can spend a lot of time and money trying to litigate complete control over viewer access to their content, a challenge they will never succeed at, or they can recognize this as an opportunities and leverage the inevitable. Engage and legitimize these defacto brand evangelists. Provide them with high quality show clips and encourage show fans to post them everywhere. Exploit the strength of viewer recommendation implicit in these posts. Or, to rewrite mom's advice, "Let them taste the milk. They'll come find the cow for more."


copyright, brands, infringement, marketing, brand evangelist, content, YouTube, Viacom

Not Completely Random Thoughts

My intention of posting at least once a week has been defeated by an overload of just about everything - work, family crises, and a backup of information. But, that doesn't mean that I haven't been churning out thoughts. I just haven't found time to funnel them from my head to the computer. So, in these few stolen moments, when I should be loading the car for the trip to the innards of New Jersey to celebrate the woman who brought me into the world, I'll start the download.

Random Thought #1: Not-For-Profit Doesn't Mean Not For Business
Over the past year I've taken on several non-profits as clients. This wasn't by design, it just happened imperceptibly until one day I discovered my one NPO client had become three, and then four. They're all wonderful organizations doing great things for the arts, for education, and generally making the world a better place. But (of course there's a "but"), I've found that in certain respects, they're run more like non-profit hobbies than businesses. Let's be honest, a non-profit is a business. It has output - a product or service - and it needs to generate income in order to operate and deliver its product or service. Sounds like a duck to me. Success may not be measured by shareholder value, but NPOs still need to engage in proven business practices in order to be successful. To think otherwise is foolish. In fact, to help change the perception that "business" isn't part of not for profit operations, I propose a name change: Non-Profit Business.

When you start looking at non-profits as businesses, there are certain business marketing realities that become clear:

- Non-Profits are Brands. That's right, just like Coke, Microsoft, and Toyota. Non-profit businesses (NPB), like all businesses have an identity that fosters perception, emotional connection, and loyalty. This identity must be honed, based on organization objectives and mission, and it must be continually tended to ensure that all communications, events, and interactions are consistent with the brand.

- All Communications are Marketing Communication. Based on the number of horrifyingly bad annual donation solicitations I've gotten, my assumption is that this idea isn't wide spread. Just because non profits are mostly in the business of doing good things doesn't mean there isn't competition. Every other NPB is competing for donor dollars which, in today's economy, are becoming less and less. Non-profits need to be developing visual identities and marketing campaigns that cut through the clutter and will be seen and heard in a creative way with a meaningful and compelling message.

- An Annual Marketing Plan is Your Tool to Achieving Annual Business Objectives. Assuming an NPB has clearly defined yearly business goals (i.e., fund raising, raising brand profile & creating awareness, events, donor acquisition, etc.), an organized marketing plan with a focused strategy, defined tactics, and success measurement tools is the most effective and efficient way to realize goals.

- Multichannel and Online Marketing Isn't Optional, It's Critical. Ask any foot dragging, geek-bashing, technology-phobic business how their strategy of resisting change is working out for them. These days most people use multiple communication channels and have schedules that are more time crunched, resulting in attention spans that are much shorter. Getting noticed, communicating your message, and persuading people to take action requires an interactive online strategy as well as off line communications and events. Using social media to communicate as well as to foster a virtual community of interested and connected supporters is one of the most powerful initiatives non-profits can undertake. Check out Beth Kanter's very illuminating posts on this.

Next up in the Random Thoughts hit parade: "Mini-Socials - Social Networking Writ Small".


Beth Kanter, brands, business, marketing, marketing communications, marketing plan, non-profit, not for profit, NPO, online marketing, social media, social networking

Creating The Met 2.0

Last week's premier performance of Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment at the Metropolitan Opera proved that rock stars can be found in every genre of music, even opera.

Juan Diego Florez, a young, sexy, and devastatingly handsome Peruvian tenor, rocked the house and brought the audience to its feet with his brilliant delivery of an aria that has nine high C's. (For those of you who aren't opera fans, this is the basketball equivalent of Michael Jordan shooting his six 3-point field goals in first half of the first game of the 1992 Finals.) And he did it twice. That's right, when he finished the aria and the audience rose, applauding and screaming, Juan Diego did what very few artists have ever done in performance at the Met. He sang an encore. This show-stopping repeat, antithetical to the historically staid character of opera, was the idea of the Met's other rock star, its General Manager, Peter Gelb. Slight, balding, and bespectacled, Mr. Gelb appears more CPA than R&R. But anyone who wants to see a brilliant case study in brand rejuvenation, pay attention. This man can also rock the house.

It's been nearly two years since Gelb stepped into the GM role at the Met, where, from day one, he knew he was taking on some formidable challenges, namely declining ticket sales and membership, and a rapidly aging audience. But Gelb came prepared with a plan to rebrand not just the Met, but the entire opera category. He would make it modern, relevant, and accessible to younger, sophisticated, art-going audiences. He would turn the Met into a content distributor, opening up new channels of delivery. He would roll out a brash and daring brand makeover that would transformed a fusty, aging institution into a hip, technology savvy, arts marketing organization. He would create the Met 2.0.

Many people thought Gelb's plan was too audacious and risky. Clearly, those folk had never read Peter Drucker whose writing may as well have been the blueprint for it: "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two, and only these two, basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs."

The marketing and innovation strategies that Gelb instituted were all designed to position the Met as a modern and hip component of the New York cultural scene, and to create a broader awareness of the entertainment value of the Met's operas among people outside of the metropolitan area. To do this, the Met focused on three main initiatives:

1. Rock the Brand.
Pre-Gelb, the Met's brand imagery was an iconography of opera house cliches: chandeliers, silhouetted 70's-era patrons, and a logo that evoked a proscenium arch were used on brochures, the Met's limited advertising, and communications. Gelb wanted to communicate a new Met brand - an organization that wasn't simply an opera venue, but one that was bringing its audiences innovative interpretations of classic operas envisioned by name film and theater directors, as well as new, avant-garde works by modern composers.

Thomas Michel, who had been the head of marketing for the Public Theater, was brought in as the Director of Marketing. Michel turned to Pentagram, a design firm he'd worked with at the Public. The results were a very simple and contemporary serifed-font logo that emphasizes the words "Met" and "Opera", and powerful, stylized photography that conveys the passion and drama of opera with a very modern and hip sensibility.


2. Advertise.
If this seems like a ridiculously obvious solution, up until 2006 it hadn't been so obvious to the Met. Advertising was anathema to the organization and the one other ad campaign they ran in their entire history wasn't meant to appeal to anyone who wasn't already an opera fan. The campaign that was launched in 2006 had a different target in mind - non-opera goers. To reach them, the campaign was spread throughout the city transit system with ads at subway entrances, station platforms, on the sides and backs of MTA buses, at bus shelters and on telephone kiosks.

3. Find New Channels and Distribute.
Bringing an audience to the opera is important, but Gelb understood that it was equally important to bring opera to an audience. If the Met was going to expand awareness and create new opera lovers it needed to find new distribution channels that could communicate the drama and excitement of a live opera.

In December 2006 they launched the Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD series that brought digital HD transmissions of six live operas to 100 specially equipped movie theaters around the world. The program has been wildly successful. In many theaters live performances sold out and encore showings were added. The 07/08 season expanded from six to eight opera transmissions and the number of participating venues worldwide increased to 600 and the 08/09 season has plans to feature eleven transmission in up t 800 theaters. By the end of this year the Met will have reached an audience of close to 900,000.

Other initiatives and channels include a subscription-based Metropolitan Opera station on SIRIUS Satellite Radio, selected open dress rehearsals, simulcasting opening night to the Jumbotron in Times Square, and streaming live operas to the Internet.

It may be a bit too early to evaluate the success of this program. While the HD transmissions are successful beyond anyone's anticipation, they're not yet making money, although are on track to do so. Met ticket sales are up more than 10% from a year ago and, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, revenue will probably be up by $10 million. Whether the momentum can be sustained and profits made remains to be seen. But what's certain is that not doing any of this would have doomed the Met to a slow and sad demise.

As a marketer I send Mr. Gelb a big Bravo. As an opera lover, I say, "Encore".


advertising, brand makeover,branding, innovation,marketing, Metropolitan Opera, Peter Gelb

The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth

This past Monday I was invited to a cocktail reception for the new Brandcenter at Virginia Commonwealth University. The VCU Brandcenter, until recently called the VCU Adcenter, is a graduate program in marketing communications. What makes the program unique is its approach. It has structured its curricula to reflect a marketing communication vision that ad agencies have been paying lip service to forever, but never really accomplishing - organically integrating the business and strategy bits with the creative and interactive bits. Led by ex-Ogilvy Chief Creative Officer Rick Boyko, the program plans on expanding its online/digital focus by adding a full-fledged interactive track in the fall semester.

In a conversation with a recent graduate of the program though, I got the sense that her job search in New York was turning out be a rude awakening. Because despite the fact that most of the advertising behemoths have interactive capabilities, these are generally balkanized organizations with no real seat at the grown-ups table.

It's been a little over a decade that agencies have been trying to figure this out. In all of the time since then, despite the multiple iterations of organization charts, agencies have never quite figured out the integration. Most likely because the people at the top still see interactive as banner ads, websites, and unequal to "legitimate" advertising.

Perhaps nothing articulates this as clearly as Allen Rosenshine's acceptance remarks at his Advertising Hall of Fame induction. This Chairman Emeritus of BBDO who has been called one of the 100 most influential people of 20th century advertising said, "Beware those who would have us believe that advertising has become irrelevant. It always was, and always will be, as relevant as we make it. The geeks will not destroy us. Only we can do that." In an interview with Ad Age's Rance Crain, Rosenshine added: "The internet becomes and is a brilliant resource for information. It isn't branding because it doesn't have the capacity to deliver the emotional content of branding."

Hmmmm. I don't know how much time Mr. Rosenshine has spent on the Internet in the the past ten years, but cumulatively, consumers have been spending hours online with compelling creative executions from brands like Audi, Dove, and Toyota, to name a few. So, if he really wants to go head to head, here's the choice for brands: create a rich, interactive, online experience that clearly articulates your brand, gives users value in the form of content or entertainment, and allows them to interact and engage in a dialog with you and with each other; or broadcast a :30 spot that most likely will be Tivo-ed out of the programming. Want to think about it?

In a piece about the Brandcenter in Creativity Magazine this past January, editor Teressa Iezzi quoted TBWA's Lee Clow: “Brands today cannot be sustained by what in the past has been called advertising…everything a brand does that connects to the consumer is media, is brand communication. If orchestrating the art of all those media conversations isn’t advertising, then perhaps the creativity of what we’ll do in the future needs a new name.”

Bravo, Brandcenter and lookout Madison Avenue, here come the geeks.


advertising, Allen Rosenshine,BBDO, Creativity Magazine,Interactive Technology, Lee Clow, marketing, Rick Boyko, TBWA, VCU Brandcenter

A Coat of Arms - 2.0

A story in today's New York Times reports that Toyota's Scion brand has launched a web application that extends the quirky-hip identity of the car and recognizes the social bonding and personal expression needs of its drivers.

The website, Scionspeak.com, features an online program that allows visitors to design their own personal coat of arms using a collection of hundreds of artist-designed components. The designs can be downloaded and turned into window decals or users can take them to airburshing shops to have them painted onto their cars. The campaign was created by StrawberryFrog in New York.

I went to the site and even though I'm several years beyond and many levels of hip below their target, I got totally sucked into creating a coat of arms (yes, I am Sista Diva the Finest.) Toyota is calling it their foray into social marketing. I wouldn't go that far, there doesn't seen to be any actual social interaction components or ways for users to interact. But I give it kudos for being well designed, fun and relevant to their target. It's slim and direct, featuring only the symbol building program and some videos on the creation of the utility. The interface is clean and elegant without a single superfluous element. The navigation is fast and straightforward and accompanied by satisfying, yet simple sound effects. Best of all, there aren't any bloated downloads. You can create your coat of arms and download it in minutes.

Little Is The New Big.

With apologies to the Who and Pete Townsend, online advertisers have been singing the same refrain for years, "See me. Feel me. Touch me. Click me." But, as Los Angeles Creative Club director, Roger Poirier pointed out at the OMMA Conference last week, "Most creative--both online and off--falls flat."

While there may be some clicking, consumer engagement is rare and there's not a whole lot of feeling or touching going on.

It seems silly that, in an environment where interaction is everything, brands haven't quite found a way to walk through the open door. Instead of adapting their online communication strategies to leverage the power of interactive technology, they've been intent on using the technology to replicate their offline executions. But, as Laurie Sullivan discussed in Tuesday's MediaPost Marketing Daily, branded widgets just may be the big little thing that gets them through the door.

Personally, I think advertisers should kiss the Red Bull stained fingers of their API programmers. Widgets give brands the ability to bring something more than a just sales message to consumers. Widgets can engage them with a game, information, content, or any kind of interesting, useful or entertaining utility. And brands can syndicate widgets in the places that their users gather, like Facebook.

A recent Business Week article describes the efforts of A&E Television to publicize their new series "Parking Wars". It's a reality show about meter readers, so they had their work cut out for them. They hired a multimedia developer to create an online game based on the series. The result is a widget, distributed between users, and played on Facebook. Newsweek reports that in less than 3 months time it's "attracted more than 198,000 unique users. many of them repeat players, and generated more than 45 million page views." Better still, these little applications, that can run on a desktop or online, are relatively quick and inexpensive to build, making the risk small and the potential payback big.