Branding - Servant of Chaos

Life at the Edge of Your Brand

One of the most interesting aspects of social media is the way in which communities adopt technologies. For in the consumer space, which is different from the enterprise, an application is not determined by its functions, but by its use. This means that while social media technologies are designed for a certain type of use and/or function, this can often be discarded by those who begin to use it. Twitter is a great example.

When Twitter first appeared, it asked a simple question (“what are you doing?”) and encouraged us to share our current activities with our network of friends and followers. But shortly after launch, the communities using Twitter transformed it … they realised that Twitter was far more useful as a way of building conversations, maintaining relationships and sharing facts, links and data with their personal communities.

What Twitter was experiencing was “life at the edge of their brand”.

On the one hand there is the product of service that a business has spent time and effort creating. On the other is the population of consumers you are hoping will engage with your offering. And in the place where the two collide is the brand – but this is not your grandfather’s brand – it is the brand that is created in the flux and chaos of interaction between your offering and those who consume, use, engage, love or hate it.

Those consumers who commit to your product in a profound way, come close to the heart of your product. They know it intimately. They understand its features and its benefits. These people live close to the Arc of Satisfaction.

However, those people who take your product into THEIR hearts live on the Arc of Experience. For these people, your product/service and your brand is inextricably linked in the ways in which they live their lives. Think iPhone.

What is clear, and what is important for marketers to understand is this – both consumers and brands are behaving in transformative ways – facilitated by social media. As Dina Mehta says:

The pace of change is really rapid, both in the behaviour of brands on the web and in terms of customer behaviour.

The challenge for marketers is to be able to deal with this changing landscape – to sense and respond. It requires continuous digital strategy. And in a difficult market (and let’s face it, when has it been an EASY market?), those who are able to sense and respond to such changes are likely to fare better. The question to ask yourself is “where are your consumers – and do they live at the edge of your brand or someone else’s?”.

UPDATE: There is a great extension of this discussion of this topic at the Italian NinjaMarketing blog. I used Google translate to explain it to me 😉

Sol Trujillo as a Mo Bro

Authenticity, Branding, Community, Good Works

Each year, around this time, the buzz starts building. There are a couple of emails and then maybe a couple of messages via Twitter. Men across the country start twitching their noses and scratching their faces. Each of us wonder — “can I do it again”. But sure enough, come November 1, the signs are obvious.

Days later, even a casual walk down the street will yield telltale signs. Five o’clock shadow yields to three day growth. Rough, sprouts give way to more a more fecund appearance … and the men, united in this cause, knowingly nod acknowledgement to each other. For during this month every year, we are no longer disengaged, disconnected or disinterested. We are all citizens of the Republic of Movember.

During November, two charities push to raise awareness around men’s health – prostate cancer and depression. Men across the country are encouraged to cleanly shave their faces and grow a moustache for charity. You can raise funds individually or as part of a team, with the funds raised going to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and BeyondBlue.

I have now been involved in Movember for the past three years. Not only do I believe in supporting these causes, I am a great fan of the strategic approach that the Movember team take to participation – for during this month I am not just “another guy growing a mo” – I am a “mo bro” (I have joined Jye’s team here). That’s right, I become part of a community (a republic no less), I join or establish a team, and I make an individual contribution to worthy causes. And importantly, it brings a sense of play and enjoyment into the world (something that I think is essential for the future of brands).

In recent weeks, we have seen a number of Australian brands begin seriously investigating social media (with mixed success). Causes such as Movember can be excellent vehicles for “humanising” your brands … and all you need to do is participate. How might this work?

Let’s take one of the country’s most notable moustached business leaders … Sol Trujillo. What sort of momentum and interest would Sol’s participation drive in Movember? How many Telstra employees would also register for the internal team? How much positive PR and buzz would this create? And how would this transform the way that YOU and the customers of Telstra think about Australia’s largest telco?

For brands wanting to engage with social media, the first step is to listen. The second is to participate. Is anyone listening? Is that a hand I see raised? I would love to think so.

From Ad Land to Inspiration

Australian Blogs, Branding

For an industry that is supposed to be at the forefront of promotion, the advertising and marketing industries do a relatively poor job of positioning and marketing themselves. Yet, if you work in these industries, it is essential to “keep up” with the latest efforts of the best minds in the business (locally if not globally) – which means relying on (of all things) – blogs that aggregate content on our behalf. There are a couple of Australian based sites that do this extremely well – Bannerblog and Duncan’s TV Ad Land.

Duncan Macleod recently moved this popular site over to a new domain – www.theinspirationroom.com (get the new feed here) and I asked him a few questions …

Duncan’s TV Ad Land was a popular site. Why the change?

Duncan’s TV Ad Land was popular – but had become limited by it’s own branding. For one, it’s naming linked the site to me alone, and I needed to develop an approach that incorporated capacity for growth, including other writers and possibly allowing sale later on. To take it to the next level (increasing readership and income) I needed help from people with capital, contacts and connections to the creative industries. After a month of conversations I moved five blogs into one and then transferred them to The Inspiration Room, joining forces with a team with a significant business plan.

Have you found there are pitfalls with this type of rebranding?
I was fully aware of the pitfalls of rebranding, having previously moved my blogs from Blogspot. Those include the loss of RSS subscribers, the sheer hard work required to update past posts, and a temporary setback in Google page rank, Alexa and Technorati ranking. However, with the use of redirection, I’ve been able to retain my place in the search engines. The main thing missing now is the number of links to images on the site. That could be a good thing for just now.

What would you do differently next time?
What would I do differently next time? I’d set up my RSS feed with email subscription right from the start – much easier to migrate to a new address. I’d choose a domain name that wasn’t linked to my name.

The Inspiration Room caters to an audience interested in advertising and marketing. Do you see it growing outside of this market?
The Inspiration Room’s growing list of regular subscribers does tend to be from the advertising and marketing world. However an analysis of visitors to the site through search engines reveals that over half of the visitors come from outside that market – people interested in reading about advertising, looking for the name of the music used, treating advertising as an art form. With the increase of shows like The Gruen Transfer, we’re moving beyond the “Funniest TV commercials” approach in the general public.

There is no discussion or comments allowed on the pieces you show. Is this a conscious decision?
Discussion/comments is allowed on every post. However the front page is designed to show the first section of each post, to allow 10 posts to be loaded quickly. Some posts have had up to 210 comments. I’m looking into a way of making it clear that there’s more to the first post on the blog. However most visitors come via search engines directly to each post and never encounter this problem.

It’s Not Time to Cut Through But to Cut Out

Blogging, Branding, Co-creation, Community, Creativity, Digital Strategy, Facts & Figures, Measurement, Smart Bloggers, Social Media

As I have grown older, I have been amazed to realise that the more I know, the greater is my capacity to learn. Not only can I quickly absorb new information and transform it into knowledge, I can also direct this towards business and branding opportunities. Even where I come in contact with some completely foreign information, my brain scrambles to find a connection that allows me to contextualise it.

But what about you? Do you find that your capacity has increased over time?

Angela Maiers provides a great explanation in this 30 minute class. She leads us through the different types of connections that we can make so that our memories can be stimulated:

Easy – the simple connection can be made because of our exposure to a topic. There is no work involved here. A common topic will add a new layer over the knowledge schema that we already possess – and the information will be readily accessible to you in an instant.

Dig – while a piece of information may not have an instantly recognisable hook on which you can make a connection, a small amount of digging into your own knowledge will help you. This will require some effort, but will also help turn a piece of new information into actionable knowledge.

Impossible – when we are introduced to an alien concept, we are faced with an impossible situation. There are no EASY ways to make sense of the information. Digging provides no context and no prism for understanding. When faced with the impossible piece of information, our natural instinct is to begin to memorise, to rote learn – but this is a mistake, for without providing some personal context to this information you will not be able to retain and apply this knowledge. It will gradually fade from memory.

In the last 10 minutes of this video, Angela shares an approach that allows us to begin creating NEW memories. She explains the technique for creating the first thread of retained knowledge upon which you can build additional context.

Chunking: After reading/absorbing a piece of information, the main ideas are categorised by the ideas that they invoke. This is not about collecting facts. It is about finding one or two words that connect and explain the overall concepts.
Joining the dots: Once you have the “big ideas” you then need to make connections between them. You need to write them down. You need to establish a narrative between them.

Now, think about this from a branding and marketing perspective. Have you ever wondered why some things stick and some don’t? In general, the information that comes to us through advertising is “impossible”. We are hit by facts and assaulted by images. These all seek to CONVINCE us.

However, if we are each subjected to 5000 marketing messages per day, the blink of an eye that acknowledges each new message will instantly erase the previous one. This means that those marketing messages that are mediated, that come with BUILT-IN context, are more likely to anchor in our memory (hence the use of popular music/spokespersons) – and this plays particularly strongly for digital/social media.

And in a time of increasing financial uncertainty, brands will be looking not to CUT THROUGH but to CUT OUT. It won’t be a matter of your brand standing out in a crowd, but of eeking out some space in which it can create meaningful context in which your consumers can participate. Those brands who have begun experimenting with social media will have an advantage in these tougher times; and those who have not will need to accelerate their engagement by hiring agencies and consultants who have a deep understanding of hands-on brand activation in the digital/social media space.

Interesting times? Sure … but really, as Angela Maiers says, it’s about making connections.

How to Thrive in a Slow Down

Branding, FutureVisions, Measurement, Social Media, Strategy

I can remember watching the Twitterstream a couple of weeks ago as the global financial crisis deepened. Here in Australia, we sit on a strange timezone precipice, where as our Monday ends, it is just beginning in the US … and a small band of locals would stay up late just to watch the first few minutes of trade in New York. There is an odd sense that we are, in some small way, witnessing history in the making.

But while the macro story is being played out thousands of kilometres from my computer screen, the impact has yet to really hit. However, there are some things that businesses can do to begin focusing their marketing efforts right now, before the shockwaves seep into our businesses. John Rosen has an excellent and detailed post that advises an initial three steps:

1. Be clear about your strategic objectives. Understand the financial measures that you are focusing on, determine the most important long term relationships, maintain your product/experience viability and figure out which competitors you should attack directly.

2. Understand your brand from a competitive point of view. Look at where the value rests in both the competitive and non-competitive environments; and do the same from a premium brand offering perspective.

3. Re-evaluate and adjust your marketing. While this sounds obvious, check out John’s list of “Do’s and Don’ts”

Craig Wilson, however, suggests that we may well be at a turning point for both the types of marketing that we do and the agencies that we use to plan, create and execute. In this great, and far reaching post, Craig outlines the state of affairs, the issues at play and makes some suggestions for where we might be heading.

Social media may well be rising at the perfect time. As consumers grow increasingly weary of broadcast advertising, and have more control than ever over the media and content they wish to consume, social media offers a subtle new direction for marketers to build relationships and brand.

The social media revolution that we have been asking for, may well materialise more quickly than even Julian Cole would have anticipated. Not only do a variety of indicators suggest that digital and social media related marketing will increase (taken in large part from the traditional marketing budget), the economic circumstances will sharpen the focus of all marketers – ensuring that campaigns and promotions receive ever greater scrutiny. And with a bevy of measurement tools at hand, digital analytics are likely to become very popular on both client and agency sides.

So, how do we thrive in this slow down? Adapting to change … evolution … new thinking and innovation, of course. Think change management and business consulting mixed in with marketing. Think the end of your agency as you know it.

But don’t rush … take it in, for as Craig says:

We may really be at one of those unique times in history, a turning point that forces change and massive innovation. New economic realities will necessitate reinvention for old media and marketing businesses to stay relevant, and will result in the rise of new media options and new marketing thinkers.

Look around you, at the media landscape today, the agencies that feed them and the marketers whoa re their clients. Take it all in. Make a mental snapshot. It may be the last time it ever looks like this.

The Land of the Free

Books, Branding, Smart Bloggers

We owe a lot to Chris Anderson. Not only did his Long Tail give us a way to conceptualise the business models around aggregated, niche, online markets, he continues to challenge the way that we think about business in an always-connected world. Here he tells us why free is the future of business.

David Armano has taken the visual approach (of course), mapping out the four types of free that Chris is talking about:

Free 1: Get one item free, buy another (as popularised by King Gillette — yes, of the razors — give away the handle but charge for the razor blades)
Free 2: Free item paid for by your attention (ie advertising)
Free 3: The so-called "freemium" — where the free "version" of a product or experience is cut down in features, prompting the purchase of the "feature rich" product or experience (ie shareware software)
Free 4: The "Gift Economy" — where something is given away in exchange for a non-monetary (or indirect) reward.

It is this final "free" that Christina (CK) Kerley has been talking about (as the share economy). It is the fundamental transformative move AWAY from price as a measurement to VALUE as an indicator or worth. Of course, this places the individual at the centre of the method of evaluation and ranking … for the value of a product or experience will depend on a combination of its RELEVANCE to a consumer and their NEED state. This alone will require us to re-think our approach to the business-to-consumer relationship. Moreover, it will transform how we imagine a business-to-business environment.

But the question for marketers of all shapes and sizes is not, "What will FREE cost us"? — but "What value can I exchange?".

Video via Amanda Mooney @ American Shelf Life.

Telstra and the Sacred Cows

Australian Blogs, Authenticity, Branding, Social Media

I remember when Telstra’s Now We Are Talking blog launched. It made a bit of a ripple, but did not really dint my consciousness, which is surprising because I am always on the lookout for brands (especially big brands) who are digging into social media. But what I do recall was a brief visit to the site and a feeling that this “blog” was going to be just what the name suggested – a whole lot of talking and not a lot of listening.

Last week, Mike Hickinbotham (from said blog), tagged me to give my two cents on whether nowwearetaking is hitting the mark. It was a nice tactic as the previous week we had a short Twitter conversation on the topic of Gartner’s hype cycle (and yes, I am still working on a post about that) … so Twitter was used effectively to reach out and break the ice, and then the blog activated to extend and deepen the engagement and conversation. “The old one-two”, as Maxwell Smart might have said.

But for me, the old one-two in social media is about the exchange of value. It is about the easy fostering of conversation and the swift conversion of that dialogue into action. In many ways, it’s more about doing than talking, after all, actions speak louder than words. And now, at least thanks to Mike, I was curious – and wanted to see just how Australia’s largest corporate blogger was dipping into the big pond.

When I visited the site, I thought I might comment on Mike’s post. Then I noticed that before being ABLE to comment I needed to register. But this is no simple registration process … I needed to also provide my postcode as a form of identification along with some demographic data. Within seconds, I have TWO barriers in place before I can even begin to have a conversation.

Recommendation: Open up comments. Make sure that a valid email address is provided, but registration is an inhibitor to conversation (which is supposedly one of your aims).

As I stepped through the registration process, I was greeted by a link to the Terms and Conditions. And while I knew what awaited me, I just couldn’t help looking for it:

By submitting material to a Forum, you:

grant us a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable worldwide licence to use, copy, publish, publicly perform, communicate and adapt that material, and to sublicense those rights through the operation of the this site; and

agree to its public disclosure.

So not only do I have to register my details, I also have to sign over the rights to any insight I share as part of a discussion!

OK, to be honest, this does not really bother me. It is, however, an indication of the lack of “transparency” despite what seems to be good intentions on the part of the bloggers.

Recommendation: Go crazy and republish your blogs under a creative commons license. This will not only demonstrate that you GET social media and its economy of mutual attribution and participative value co-creation, it will also build you enormous and instant goodwill.

Wrap-up

Now, I am no stranger to corporate bureaucracies, to legal reviews or brand guidelines; so I have to tip my hat to Telstra’s social media team for making it this far. But, to be honest, as Cameron Reilly suggested, there is a long way to go.

There are a growing band of active Australian bloggers who also provide consulting services, strategic advice and insight as to how you can plan for, build and execute an integrated strategy with social media, trust and transparency at its heart. I am sure they would help accelerate your successes in this space (especially now that you are throwing Twitter into the mix). It’s time to slay some (corporate) sacred cows and really get the message out. Telstra has made a great start but is also faced with an almost unmatched opportunity. I’d like to see them take it.

Update: The conversation continues with Lid providing a series of tips and insights; Stephen Collins suggesting a thorough reading of the Cluetrain Manifesto and the Zappos tweetstream; and Katie Harris giving the thumbs down. Jye Smith has also chimed in.

A Wii Kidsperience

Branding, Digital Strategy, Future of Your Brand, Storytelling, Videos

When we talk about thinking "outside the box", or when we think of the "experience", this often means that we are trying to make a break with current types and modes of thinking. On the creative front, this means playing with expectation, changing the framing of a story, transforming a consumer’s sense of control or mastery. I often think about this in terms of the P-L-A-Y framework:

P — for Power

Demanding of attention
Testing limits (boundaries around behaviour, responsibility etc)
Controlling the controllable
Belonging

L — for learning and curiosity

Skills development
Negotiation

A — for adventure

Exploring an ever changing world
Actively making the world a better place

Y — the yelp of surprise and delight

Recognition and reward
Self expression

As brands continue to investigate the changing consumer and business landscape prompted by the ever-increasing adoption of social (and mobile) media, strategists need to also consider the idea of “kidsperience”.

Nintendo appear to be following a similar path in their efforts to differentiate their product in the highly competitive gaming console market. As Scott Weisbrod points out, Nintendo are in search of a Blue Ocean. His competitive strategy canvas shows exactly how the positioning is being planned. But the question remains – how does this play out in their branding and advertising works? Take a look here. NO … wait, really, click through – and then come back and share your thoughts. I am fascinated to know.

The Blue Ocean Strategy – Ipod, Wii, and this Blog

Does Social Media Scale?

Branding, Old Media, Smart Bloggers, Social Media, Strategy

Over the past week or so there have been a series of ideas coming together in my mind. I had been struggling to pull them together into a coherent framework until I saw this post by Peter Kim. He asks some difficult questions around the benefit of social media, but goes further — suggesting that social media does not scale:

One-ninth of the WORLD’s population watched the 2006 FIFA World Cup final. Social media vs. Television for marketing purposes just doesn’t match up.

But in my view, this is looking only at potential reach around a single, fixed-in-time event. And surely the predominant global brand on display during the match was the FIFA World Cup — all the rest of the advertising space would have been segmented to maximise the returns available in each broadcaster’s market. This fragmentation of ad space is exactly the domain and power of the long tail — where social media can provide a resonance and relevance to niche audiences.

Having said this, there is an issue around the human resources required to activate a social media program. As Peter says:

I do believe social media can help sell. Social content has started integrating into traditional tactics like banners and emails. I have a better opinion of Comcast after Frank helped me with my cable modem and will resist Verizon FIOS for a while longer. From my last post asking if social media matters, the commenting consensus seems to agree, with its impact in awareness, consideration, and preference.

But if social media marketing matters, then does it scale?

I don’t think so. I think the technologies scale. But the programs – especially those with a labor-intensive component – don’t.

The labour intensiveness of an active social media program can become a bottleneck. There simply are not enough Richard@DELL’s around to help every person with an issue. However, the aim — or certainly the aims I normally have in mind when constructing a social media or digital strategy — is to foster the growth of a community in such a way that “external participants” begin to play an active role. So rather than taking a broadcast view of social media, the aim is to facilitate a range of participatory action/activities. Effectively this means using social MEDIA to activate social NETWORKS.

In doing so you have to manage the constraints — COST, SCALE or CONTROL. Any change you make to one will impact both the others. The more you activate the social network, the less control you will have of your brand, your messaging and your story. Yet this is the cost-benefit paradox — for while you release your brand, your services and maybe even your support into the wilds of the social media landscape, you find, perhaps, a more authentic brand story coming to life — a story borne out of a participatory experience between your evangelists and your everyday or casual consumers.

Free Marketing Strategy eBook

Branding, Comms 101, Digital Strategy, Strategy

Earlier this week I received a LinkedIn question from Jay Ehret, wondering whether I knew of any good, free eBooks on marketing. Unfortunately, most of the eBooks that I knew of were not free. But then, yesterday, Andrea Vascellari, sent a message on Twitter advising on the availability of a free marketing strategy eBook.

From a quick scan, "Strategic Communications Planning" by Dave Fleet is a great introduction to the steps required to develop a corporate communications plan. It covers context, audience, messaging, tactics, budget and even evaluation. For those wanting to go into further detail on the planning process, I would advise you to join the Plannersphere and begin reading the blogs of various members. AND don’t forget to visit the Staufenberger Repository to download this valuable (and rare) PDF of Stephen King’s Planning Guide.

But remember, while this material is available free of charge, putting the recommendations and suggestions in place in either a client or in-house setting is a challenge. The ideas are out there, but the devil is in the execution, in how you actually turn these ideas into frameworks, notes, analysis documents and creative briefs — and that is where professional planners can add real value. Good luck!

Strategic Communications Planning – Upload a Document to Scribd

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