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

"Who Said This Isn't Media"

The "Digital" column in this past Wednesday's AdAge.com had a surprising headline: "P&G Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook."

It seems that P&G's general manager-interactive marketing and innovation, Ted McConnell, in speaking to a program presented by the Ad Club of Cincinnati, thinks that social networks are the wrong places for brands to be. The Ad Age article quotes him as saying, "What in heaven's name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?"

Hey Ted, a friendly piece of advice, in today's job market you may want to keep your profound lack of understanding of the social networking world to yourself. You know, it's bad enough you tasted shoe-leather with the Facebook line. But then you go and follow it up with: "Who said this is media?" Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren't trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. ... We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it."

His Ad Club speech might have worked out better if he'd been invited to participate in P&G and Google's -job-swap program, where, in an effort for P&G'ers to understand Internet users better, and for Google to win a larger part of P&G's ad budget, staffers from each company spend time at each other's staff training programs and business meetings. (WSJ, Nov. 19)

Or he could have read Danny Flamberg's excellent and thoughtful recent post on MediaPost's Social Media Insider, titled, "Making Sense of Social Media."

Or, he could have simply done some homework to get a little historical context.

To anyone who has been paying attention, the proliferation of social media shouldn’t be a surprise. Ever since 1985 when Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant began the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, which became The WELL, people have been flocking to converse with, learn from, and establish relationships with each other in an environment free conventional time and geographic restrictions. These “virtual communities”, as Howard Rheingold called them, were powerful lures to a universal, deep-seated desire to reach out and be social in a way that creates local, people-operated neighborhoods in a global context.

This ability to create communities around shared interests, as well as the instantaneous connection of email was a powerful driver of the first online services, like AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy.

Social communities like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, are simply the latest incarnations of this quest to connect. From the start, though, marketers have failed to understand the Web as the interactive environment that it is, and have continued to engage as if it’s one of the passive mediums they’re comfortable with. It’s as if brands and marketers are the online equivalent of the ugly American tourist who travels abroad, and when the locals don’t understand their requests, simply repeat it slower and louder, as if the listener is simple-minded and deaf.

We need to help brands (as well as brand "Digital Gurus) understand that the Web isn’t a magazine with hyperlinks or TV with text. It’s a constantly evolving environment where information will always want to be free, it’s a democratic publishing forum, and it’s a place where dishonesty is outed at the speed of sound. So, s’il vous plait, before you open your mouth, learn to speak the language.

*Photo by Tarnie

The Year of the Depend Undergarment

[ed. note: I began this posting back in May, before my summer-of-too-much-work-and-too-little-time, before my blog & my tweets became casualties of my schedule, and before the extraordinary talent of David Foster Wallace was silenced by his suicide. RIP, DFW]

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace's 1996 novel, predicted a not-so-distant future, where brand advertising has infiltrated our lives so completely that even time is sponsored. Calendar years are no longer designated by numbers, they're named after products:
Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar, Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, and Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.

Back then, I thought the idea of sponsored time was humorous, in the way that a real idea exaggerated beyond logic becomes funny. But today, I'm thinking maybe not so much funny as prescient. It seems like everyone is looking for the last remaining untapped media areas - those bits of everyday life hiding in plain sight, until someone says: "Doh! Let's put an ad here!" The sides of buses, the roofs of taxis, wrapped around cars, everywhere you look, blank space has been infiltrated by advertising. From sports and arts venues that get stuck with the prosaic names of of their sponsors (Monster Park? PNC Bank Arts Center?), to the ads laminated to the bottom of the security bins I recently saw at Richmond Airport (Zappos: "Getting shoes through security isn't always fast. Buying them is.") branding is popping up everywhere.

All of that media ingenuity got me to thinking, what's left? Where is the rest of the still unexploited real estate that captures eyeballs in a meaningful way? I came up with a few ideas. Feel free to add to them, steal them, or come to the conclusion that some things may be better off left unsponsored.

1. Booty Banners. Witnessed walking past a NYC construction site: two cute young women in tight jeans sashaying; men in hard hats staring and hooting. Me, thinking hmmmm, is there are beer brand on the planet that wouldn't love to see armies of young men follow their logo down the street?

2. Elevator Door :15s. Yeah, yeah, you're thinking I must have been living under a rock for the past few years - elevatortainment tv is old news. OK, it is. But ads run on the outside of the doors, where all attention is focused in efforts to telepathically summon the elevator car, is new news.

3. Subway Pop-Up Stores. It seems that no matter how much the MTA raises its fares, there's never enough money to get their budget out of its hole. Why not rent out portions of subway cars as "pop-up" stores. Think about it. Probably 90% of the train riding population shops at Duane Reade. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to pick up a container of hand sanitizer on a crowded east side local?



copyright, brands, infringement, marketing, branding, advertising, sponsorship

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

The Ad Men Get Bitch Slapped, The Cable Guy Tweets

In today's NY Times, Stuart Elliot reports that the attendees of this year's American Association of Advertising Agencies (Four A's) leadership conference found a very different event from previous years. Instead of the usual agenda of drinks/golf/and self-congratulatory bullshit, the attendees were dished a series of verbal whuppings followed by workshops on digital media. If this sounds like agency-abuse, it was actually self-inflicted. The conferences of the past several years were so thin on content and relevant information that, Elliott reports, some wanted to do away with it altogether. So this year, the format was changed.

Tom Carroll, TBWA Worldwide president and ceo, laid it on the line:

Mr. Carroll acknowledged that it would be hard work to “change the way we do our business,” but called it a necessary response to the profound shifts in media, consumer behavior and technology that are remaking the advertising landscape.

“All industries recalibrate themselves,” Mr. Carroll said, illustrating his point with a rhetorical question, “How’d you like to be in the CD business?”

My hero, Lee Clow, showed even less mercy and here's where the bitch slapping started in earnest:

“Stop whining,” Mr. Clow told the estimated 380 attendees. The new realities “shouldn’t be scary,” he said, because they offer “a huge opportunity for us” to become far more useful to marketer clients as they seek more effective ways to sell products.

“If you want to participate, you’ve got to start hiring young people,” Mr. Clow said, “and don’t tell them what to do — ask them what to do.”

Apparently, the crowd received their flogging enthusiastically and flocked to the digital media demonstrations. All of this warms my heart to read, but it makes me wonder, if agencies were so hot to find out about transforming their business and really integrating digital media in meaningful way, what in god's name have they been waiting for???

Today's Social Media Insider Blog by Catharine Taylor, reports about the opposite end of the spectrum - a company that doesn't need to be bitch slapped in order to wake up and smell the coffee. Comcast has appointed a customer service rep, Frank Eliason, to be their Twitterer, under the name Comcastcares. Taylor writes:

The fact that Eliason’s job even exists illustrates the serendipity required for most companies to get with the social networking program today. His emergence on Twitter is the result of his own long-held interest in tracking customer sentiment — along with a nudge from a Comcast executive a few months ago to check out what people were saying about the company on the micro-blogging service. Eliason just observed Twitter at first before tentatively wading in. But earlier this month, his dalliance with Twitter burst into the blogosphere, when he noticed a tweet from Michael Arrington, who runs the highly influential blog TechCrunch. Arrington was complaining that his Comcast Internet service was inexplicably down. Eliason reached out to help, and Comcast soon dispatched a team to Arrington’s house to fix his Internet connection. It was, Eliason says, a turning point, but not in quite the way you’d think. Sure, Arrington’s experience with Eliason turned into a lengthy post on TechCrunch, but what seems to have interested Eliason more is how his Twitter followers rallied around him when some said that Comcast had only helped Arrington because he was Arrington. No, his supporters said, he’d helped out many other people too. Comcastcares was forming relationships.

So does this mean Comcast has succeeded, where agencies have failed, in molding themselves to operate and succeed in a digital interactive world? I'll bet anyone who's called their customer service lately would vote no. But, as Michael Arrington blogged about his experience:

But wow, they’re doing at least one thing right. Well before most people, they have identified blogs, and particularly Twitter, as an excellent early warning system to flag possible brand implosions.

Maybe next year the 4 A's should be held in Philadelphia.


advertising, 4 A's,consumer behavior, customer service,interactive