Increasingly email marketing messages are being read on screens other than the 19-24 inch-sized monitor of a typical desktop. Marketers now have to take into account the growing number of people who check email via smartphone - which have screens typically sized at 2-4 inches. (via Direct Marketing Association).
With the advent of tablet computers - thanks to Apple and now Microsoft and HP - as well as the continued growth of e-readers and netbooks, email marketers can expect the 20% of recipients who now view their messages on smartphones to grow even more to include these other devices.
Transitioning to this multi-device world will require equal parts intuitiveness about what people are willing to read on smaller screens and a technical understanding of how the messages appear on these devices.
Email Ergonomics
For the former, there is a surprising wealth of statistical data. For instance, the DMA presentation notes that people reading emails from smartphones typically read about half an inch to an inch away from the screen, with their heads down, leaning forward.
An e-reader user, by contrast, will have the device half an inch to an inch and a half away, reading with his or her head down and leaning back. That is also true with a netbook; however a laptop user will be sitting two to three inches away with his head up, leaning forward.
Tech Issues
Email marketers also face different tech challenges when their messages are opened on mobile devices (via DM News) Since mobile e-mail generally redirects messages from the e-mail server, it's impossible to determine whether recipients have read an e-mail on a mobile device or in the e-mail client.
Mobile devices generally turn off images, making open rates difficult to track. Also, traditional tracking methods, including web analytics providers and the ESP, don't track mobile browsers.
Tactics to keep in mind include:
Keep images - as well as email file sizes - to a minimum.
Test for both traditional and mobile email.
Build both an HTML version and an xHTML, or mobile-friendly, version of the e-mail to host on a web page.
Subject lines still count.
For more information, please visit marketingvox.com.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
How to Move Apps from Distraction to Transaction
Brought to you by Jordan Greene
The year 2009 may be remembered as when the smartphone entered our everyday vernacular, but it also was when more marketers finally began to see the opportunities available through a device that is carried daily by virtually every consumer in their target audiences. The dramatic visibility and uptake of apps has made so much noise that it could hardly be ignored.
This is just the beginning. As the adoption of smarter phones continues and the next wave of development deploys, brand managers will be amazed at the sheer service and advertising possibilities. However, many of these seemingly futuristic advances will be based on the features already inherent in today's mobile handsets. With understanding of capabilities, some imagination, and constant focus on business goals, brands do not have to wait, and can build these advanced mobile programs into their 2010 plans.
Below are three fundamental areas for marketers to focus on, based on current technologies, with views and applications as to how each can serve the savvy marketer today and tomorrow.
Current reality: The transaction engine
The term mCommerce (or mobile commerce) has been used often, but it does not really capture the possibilities of what can be created through mobile devices. These pocket-sized computers, which just happen to make phone calls, really are powerful transactional engines. With that in mind, apps and other mobile functionality move all kinds of transactions into an un-tethered environment -- beyond traditional online -- and create the opportunity for new kinds of commerce and activity altogether.
As brands continue to evaluate which mobile opportunities to undertake, it is important to see precisely how this channel can either enhance an existing business or create an entirely new mechanism for interacting with consumers.
Retail is an obvious fit for the "enhancement" category simply by extending into the mobile environment. While some brands have left any transaction potential out of their current apps, the online juggernaut of Amazon embraced it smartly, and created additional value for its customers.
First, Amazon addressed simple mobile purchases, as consumers can log in to their existing user accounts, just as they would from any PC. This gets past the security-blanket hurdle. Next, using the core functionality on many smartphones -- specifically the camera -- the Amazon app brings the online brand into the real world. Users can snap a picture of any desired product with the app, which relays the information directly to Amazon. The photo is then matched to similar products sold on the site, either via automation or a group of people, and the consumer is notified in-app, via email, on Amazon.com's PC personalized homepage, and in the user's wishlist. Essentially, the world becomes the Amazon Shopping Mall. More importantly, this creates potential transactions virtually anywhere, including at competitors' brick-and-mortar locations.
Pizza Hut has moved in an opposite direction, mapping mobile phone purchase transactions to physical retail restaurants. For a consumer, the primary method of ordering food was traditionally to find and call a local Pizza Hut. But the company's new mobile service essentially brought the menu to life, helping a user customize a pizza order and then place it automatically at a local restaurant (using location-based services). Purchases can be made directly from the phone, and the mobile aspect keeps this access available to the consumer on-demand. While the app itself has had both positive and negative response, its business model illustrates how to open new avenues to the consumer when other online efforts have not been as successful.
The opportunities it brings
When adapted by other types of localized businesses, this could lead to true, efficient, on-demand purchases and delivery. Think of it as a retail store with no cash register. The mobile phone provides a touchpoint and interactive interface to the consumer, as well as connectivity to the transaction engine for purchases. So consumers can walk through a store, pick out items on their own handset, press buy, and grab their purchases as they exit. Or how about truly fast food, where each customer can order for him or herself at McDonald's without uttering a word. No need for lines, as there would just be purchase and distribution. These are service and business possibilities that the PC environment could never truly offer.
One new arena that opened with online adoption -- banking -- is about to change dramatically again, as mobile may provide an even more robust platform to service customers. Many of the large banks have deployed their own mobile apps, which currently offer the simplified basics of the PC environment. However, more functionality will find its way into these interactions, and can create new services altogether. USAA, a bank and insurance company, lets its customers cash checks directly from an iPhone app. The user takes a picture of the check, transmits it to the bank, and the funds are applied to the consumer's account.
Now, take this approach even further. What if a bank customer never stepped foot in a physical branch? The account opening "paperwork" can be done through the touchscreen of a phone, including the signage card. Deposits can be made. Money can be transferred. Even cash can be dispensed from machines with customers carrying the smartest of smart ATM cards, the phone.
Current reality: Location
Physical location may be the single most relevant targeting attribute for any marketer. As location targeting for ad units becomes more prevalent, the current method of evaluating and buying digital advertising becomes quite antiquated. Audience is great; demographics are helpful guides; but the actual ability to place highly-appropriate marketing in front of a consumer inside a decision-making moment increases the value of interactive advertising immeasurably.
The possibility of so-called "location-based services" has had marketers salivating ever since the smallest iota of computing or digital media became mobile. For the past decade, virtually the same example (just with varying brands) has been used by technologists and marketers alike to describe a mobile, location-targeted campaign. It sounds something like this: "You are walking by The Gap, and your phone begins to shake with an offer of 10 percent off a pair of jeans. You walk in the store, present your phone, and buy your jeans -- along with four other items."
From the introduction of the Palm VII with its pop up antennae to the embracing of the iPhone, challenges to this approach existed on technological and consumer-usage levels. However, within the past three years, both of these have been at least partially solved, making hyperlocal-targeting a reality.
From a consumer usage standpoint, Disney took an early stab at this, with a child-locator service in its now departed eponymous mobile service. But it was the introduction and adoption of mobile apps that created the basis for consumers to proactively use location to their own benefit. Obvious services such as mapping, driving directions, and mobile search use location as a focal criterion. An added category that found significant value with location is social media.
Several platforms including Loopt, Google Lattitude, and foursquare use location as a primary component for users to interact with their network of friends and contacts. Instead of just manual status updates, as on Facebook, automated location updates accompany posts, including displaying friends' current positions on maps. With this interaction as a basis, these services also offer suggestions of events, stores, and restaurants in the area.
The opportunities it brings
A brand advertising in such an environment can significantly heighten its own relevance. In fact, for retailers with physical storefronts ranging from clothing chains to restaurants, this is the specific type of consumer engagement that they have long sought. For example, a consumer having coffee at Starbucks opens a social media app to find friends in the area. He is presented with an exclusive mobile offer in a visual ad unit for the Best Buy within a block from his location. Alternatively, if the consumer is within the proximity of a Radio Shack, he could be served another unique offer pushing him to Best Buy. This location-aware advertising gives brands great consumer influence, hyperlocal targeting capabilities, and reduction in wasted digital media.
Campaigns like this exist today across the different platforms that have location at the core of their service. However, each platform has wrestled with moving that concept into a larger ad buying conversation. This transition is hindered partially by a matter of understanding by the marketer of the mere possibilities and the creativity to use this type of advertising effectively. Equally though, the challenge lies in the age-old scalability issue. That is, many agency buyers want to make large buys. While understandable, the real focus should be to directly address a brand's goals by adapting to the opportunities created by technology.
The seminal moment for advertisers will be when virtually every ad unit can be location-aware. This moves the potential from confined communities to virtually anyone accessing the internet or using an app on a mobile phone. This will enable a marketer to augment the normal buying decision criteria with the assumption of using physical consumer positioning. "Right place, right time" is an old adage, but here is that precise potential for the astute advertiser.
Current reality: Audio interactivity
Mobile devices are still primarily for making phone calls. While this is an often-forgotten aspect for mobile marketing possibilities, the technological necessity to support this functionality places a microphone in each consumer's pocket. This provides a basic component for untapped advanced advertising and interactivity.
Services like Shazaam have amazed and impressed consumers with its app that "listens" to songs and does a look-up based on that 10-second audio clip. It then returns a list of possible places to purchase the song directly through the mobile phone.
The essence of this concept can translate specifically for brands as well. To simplify the overall functionality, Shazaam uses an audio element to trigger a response. What if a clever marketer were to build similar pieces into a mobile campaign, letting users' phones listen to its advertisements, thereby augmenting larger media investments?
For example, Wal-Mart could create Mobile Sunday on NFL telecasts the week before Thanksgiving 2010. On its national TV spots, it featured an exclusive mobile sale for Samsung's Blu-ray player. While the commercial may have looked like any other, the audio -- whether audible or not -- automatically triggers the customer's phone to open to the product details and purchase opportunity for the Blu-ray player. Now that is how to use advertising to directly drive purchase.
Further, consumer behavior proves that people watch TV with their phones by their sides (see "American Idol"). It is an ideal interactive medium, which some brands have tried to embrace with text message calls-to-action. This mechanism is significantly more advanced, and even simpler for the consumer.
The opportunities it brings
Beyond the single app component, the next logical step would be mobile ad units that are themselves "audibly aware." This infers the relevance of the moment based on the sounds surrounding the consumer. While a consumer is multi-tasking, watching a TV show while viewing the web on the phone, mobile advertisements could directly correlate to the show itself. This would let a brand reinforce its on-air buy, potentially compensating for the exposure lost to DVRs. It is yet another evolution in the targeting capabilities made possible by the growing contingent of iPhone, Blackberry, and Google Android users.
The awareness and transactional capabilities that mobile phones can provide will continue to grow rapidly, and can serve brands well. There will inevitably be some privacy concerns, but the right approaches and innovations will help protect consumers. As the online world and that around us blurs more, the opportunity for a marketer to adapt may be the biggest challenge. This is not a matter of chasing the shiniest, newest thing. It is understanding consumer behaviors, and how mobile technology specifically enables brands to actively be a relevant component of each customer's day.
Jordan Greene is principal/mobile media at Mella Media.
The year 2009 may be remembered as when the smartphone entered our everyday vernacular, but it also was when more marketers finally began to see the opportunities available through a device that is carried daily by virtually every consumer in their target audiences. The dramatic visibility and uptake of apps has made so much noise that it could hardly be ignored.
This is just the beginning. As the adoption of smarter phones continues and the next wave of development deploys, brand managers will be amazed at the sheer service and advertising possibilities. However, many of these seemingly futuristic advances will be based on the features already inherent in today's mobile handsets. With understanding of capabilities, some imagination, and constant focus on business goals, brands do not have to wait, and can build these advanced mobile programs into their 2010 plans.
Below are three fundamental areas for marketers to focus on, based on current technologies, with views and applications as to how each can serve the savvy marketer today and tomorrow.
Current reality: The transaction engine
The term mCommerce (or mobile commerce) has been used often, but it does not really capture the possibilities of what can be created through mobile devices. These pocket-sized computers, which just happen to make phone calls, really are powerful transactional engines. With that in mind, apps and other mobile functionality move all kinds of transactions into an un-tethered environment -- beyond traditional online -- and create the opportunity for new kinds of commerce and activity altogether.
As brands continue to evaluate which mobile opportunities to undertake, it is important to see precisely how this channel can either enhance an existing business or create an entirely new mechanism for interacting with consumers.
Retail is an obvious fit for the "enhancement" category simply by extending into the mobile environment. While some brands have left any transaction potential out of their current apps, the online juggernaut of Amazon embraced it smartly, and created additional value for its customers.
First, Amazon addressed simple mobile purchases, as consumers can log in to their existing user accounts, just as they would from any PC. This gets past the security-blanket hurdle. Next, using the core functionality on many smartphones -- specifically the camera -- the Amazon app brings the online brand into the real world. Users can snap a picture of any desired product with the app, which relays the information directly to Amazon. The photo is then matched to similar products sold on the site, either via automation or a group of people, and the consumer is notified in-app, via email, on Amazon.com's PC personalized homepage, and in the user's wishlist. Essentially, the world becomes the Amazon Shopping Mall. More importantly, this creates potential transactions virtually anywhere, including at competitors' brick-and-mortar locations.
Pizza Hut has moved in an opposite direction, mapping mobile phone purchase transactions to physical retail restaurants. For a consumer, the primary method of ordering food was traditionally to find and call a local Pizza Hut. But the company's new mobile service essentially brought the menu to life, helping a user customize a pizza order and then place it automatically at a local restaurant (using location-based services). Purchases can be made directly from the phone, and the mobile aspect keeps this access available to the consumer on-demand. While the app itself has had both positive and negative response, its business model illustrates how to open new avenues to the consumer when other online efforts have not been as successful.
The opportunities it brings
When adapted by other types of localized businesses, this could lead to true, efficient, on-demand purchases and delivery. Think of it as a retail store with no cash register. The mobile phone provides a touchpoint and interactive interface to the consumer, as well as connectivity to the transaction engine for purchases. So consumers can walk through a store, pick out items on their own handset, press buy, and grab their purchases as they exit. Or how about truly fast food, where each customer can order for him or herself at McDonald's without uttering a word. No need for lines, as there would just be purchase and distribution. These are service and business possibilities that the PC environment could never truly offer.
One new arena that opened with online adoption -- banking -- is about to change dramatically again, as mobile may provide an even more robust platform to service customers. Many of the large banks have deployed their own mobile apps, which currently offer the simplified basics of the PC environment. However, more functionality will find its way into these interactions, and can create new services altogether. USAA, a bank and insurance company, lets its customers cash checks directly from an iPhone app. The user takes a picture of the check, transmits it to the bank, and the funds are applied to the consumer's account.
Now, take this approach even further. What if a bank customer never stepped foot in a physical branch? The account opening "paperwork" can be done through the touchscreen of a phone, including the signage card. Deposits can be made. Money can be transferred. Even cash can be dispensed from machines with customers carrying the smartest of smart ATM cards, the phone.
Current reality: Location
Physical location may be the single most relevant targeting attribute for any marketer. As location targeting for ad units becomes more prevalent, the current method of evaluating and buying digital advertising becomes quite antiquated. Audience is great; demographics are helpful guides; but the actual ability to place highly-appropriate marketing in front of a consumer inside a decision-making moment increases the value of interactive advertising immeasurably.
The possibility of so-called "location-based services" has had marketers salivating ever since the smallest iota of computing or digital media became mobile. For the past decade, virtually the same example (just with varying brands) has been used by technologists and marketers alike to describe a mobile, location-targeted campaign. It sounds something like this: "You are walking by The Gap, and your phone begins to shake with an offer of 10 percent off a pair of jeans. You walk in the store, present your phone, and buy your jeans -- along with four other items."
From the introduction of the Palm VII with its pop up antennae to the embracing of the iPhone, challenges to this approach existed on technological and consumer-usage levels. However, within the past three years, both of these have been at least partially solved, making hyperlocal-targeting a reality.
From a consumer usage standpoint, Disney took an early stab at this, with a child-locator service in its now departed eponymous mobile service. But it was the introduction and adoption of mobile apps that created the basis for consumers to proactively use location to their own benefit. Obvious services such as mapping, driving directions, and mobile search use location as a focal criterion. An added category that found significant value with location is social media.
Several platforms including Loopt, Google Lattitude, and foursquare use location as a primary component for users to interact with their network of friends and contacts. Instead of just manual status updates, as on Facebook, automated location updates accompany posts, including displaying friends' current positions on maps. With this interaction as a basis, these services also offer suggestions of events, stores, and restaurants in the area.
The opportunities it brings
A brand advertising in such an environment can significantly heighten its own relevance. In fact, for retailers with physical storefronts ranging from clothing chains to restaurants, this is the specific type of consumer engagement that they have long sought. For example, a consumer having coffee at Starbucks opens a social media app to find friends in the area. He is presented with an exclusive mobile offer in a visual ad unit for the Best Buy within a block from his location. Alternatively, if the consumer is within the proximity of a Radio Shack, he could be served another unique offer pushing him to Best Buy. This location-aware advertising gives brands great consumer influence, hyperlocal targeting capabilities, and reduction in wasted digital media.
Campaigns like this exist today across the different platforms that have location at the core of their service. However, each platform has wrestled with moving that concept into a larger ad buying conversation. This transition is hindered partially by a matter of understanding by the marketer of the mere possibilities and the creativity to use this type of advertising effectively. Equally though, the challenge lies in the age-old scalability issue. That is, many agency buyers want to make large buys. While understandable, the real focus should be to directly address a brand's goals by adapting to the opportunities created by technology.
The seminal moment for advertisers will be when virtually every ad unit can be location-aware. This moves the potential from confined communities to virtually anyone accessing the internet or using an app on a mobile phone. This will enable a marketer to augment the normal buying decision criteria with the assumption of using physical consumer positioning. "Right place, right time" is an old adage, but here is that precise potential for the astute advertiser.
Current reality: Audio interactivity
Mobile devices are still primarily for making phone calls. While this is an often-forgotten aspect for mobile marketing possibilities, the technological necessity to support this functionality places a microphone in each consumer's pocket. This provides a basic component for untapped advanced advertising and interactivity.
Services like Shazaam have amazed and impressed consumers with its app that "listens" to songs and does a look-up based on that 10-second audio clip. It then returns a list of possible places to purchase the song directly through the mobile phone.
The essence of this concept can translate specifically for brands as well. To simplify the overall functionality, Shazaam uses an audio element to trigger a response. What if a clever marketer were to build similar pieces into a mobile campaign, letting users' phones listen to its advertisements, thereby augmenting larger media investments?
For example, Wal-Mart could create Mobile Sunday on NFL telecasts the week before Thanksgiving 2010. On its national TV spots, it featured an exclusive mobile sale for Samsung's Blu-ray player. While the commercial may have looked like any other, the audio -- whether audible or not -- automatically triggers the customer's phone to open to the product details and purchase opportunity for the Blu-ray player. Now that is how to use advertising to directly drive purchase.
Further, consumer behavior proves that people watch TV with their phones by their sides (see "American Idol"). It is an ideal interactive medium, which some brands have tried to embrace with text message calls-to-action. This mechanism is significantly more advanced, and even simpler for the consumer.
The opportunities it brings
Beyond the single app component, the next logical step would be mobile ad units that are themselves "audibly aware." This infers the relevance of the moment based on the sounds surrounding the consumer. While a consumer is multi-tasking, watching a TV show while viewing the web on the phone, mobile advertisements could directly correlate to the show itself. This would let a brand reinforce its on-air buy, potentially compensating for the exposure lost to DVRs. It is yet another evolution in the targeting capabilities made possible by the growing contingent of iPhone, Blackberry, and Google Android users.
The awareness and transactional capabilities that mobile phones can provide will continue to grow rapidly, and can serve brands well. There will inevitably be some privacy concerns, but the right approaches and innovations will help protect consumers. As the online world and that around us blurs more, the opportunity for a marketer to adapt may be the biggest challenge. This is not a matter of chasing the shiniest, newest thing. It is understanding consumer behaviors, and how mobile technology specifically enables brands to actively be a relevant component of each customer's day.
Jordan Greene is principal/mobile media at Mella Media.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
The Principles of Marketing Can Be Summarized in One Word
Brought to you by Al Ries
A number of people have asked us to summarize our marketing principles in a simple, easy-to-remember way. Good thought. Having written (or co-written) 11 books on the subject, I can see how our basic principles can get buried in a blizzard of examples and case histories.
What's the No. 1 principle of marketing, at least as far as we're concerned? It's the principle of focus. You narrow the focus in order to own a word in the mind of the consumer. Without a focus, it's very difficult to build a strong brand. And without a strong brand, any company's future is in doubt.
While focus should be the key ingredient in any marketing campaign, it's not the whole story. So we developed an acronym called FOCVS that does sum up our key thoughts. "FOCVS," a word using the original alphabet of the Roman Empire, consists of five key elements.
F is for 'first'
Nothing works better in marketing than being the first brand in a new category in the mind.
Starbucks in high-end coffee.
Red Bull in energy drinks.
BlackBerry in wireless e-mail.
There are two issues, however, that many people miss. The first issue is what we mean by being first. It's the first brand in the mind that matters, not the first brand in the category. Powells.com was the first internet bookstore, but not in the mind. The first brand in the mind was Amazon.
The second issue is focus. It's always possible to become the first brand in a new category by narrowing your focus.
Take Dell, which became the world's No. 1 brand of personal computer. Dell wasn't the first personal computer in the mind. (Apple, IBM and a host of other brands got into the mind long before Michael Dell's creation.) Dell Computer narrowed its focus to direct sales only, the first brand to do so. This was the key decision that made the Dell brand a worldwide success.
Dell didn't get started until 1984, nine years after the first personal computer hit the market. By 1984, the market was saturated with computer manufacturers. As Business Week reported in its Aug. 8, 1983, issue: "Pounding on corporate doors are more than 150 makers of personal computers."
Suppose you had said to one of these 150: "Let's narrow the focus to direct sales only." That's probably the opposite of what they wanted to do. "We need more distribution, not less," might have been the likely response.
It gets worse. In that same issue, Business Week reported: "Computer and office automation companies are beginning to pitch comprehensive office systems that offer everything from personal computers to large central computers as well as the communications to connect all the equipment. This list of companies includes Burroughs, Data General, Digital Equipment, International Business Machines, Sperry and Wang."
Narrow the focus? Everybody was doing exactly the opposite. Expansion, not contraction, was the order of the day.
It's also the order of today's day. You've probably noticed that Dell has joined the expansion crowd with predictable results.
What mystifies many marketing mavens is how two companies can use the same strategy with diametrically different results. One is successful; the other is not -- a mystery that can be solved by assuming that the successful company has superior products.
And we're left with the same old canard: The better product wins in the marketplace.
Hewlett-Packard is expanding its product line at the same rate as Dell. By 2006, the two companies had virtually identical worldwide PC market shares: Dell had 17.1%; Hewlett-Packard had 17%.
Three years later, Hewlett-Packard's market share is 19.9% and Dell's market share is 12.8%.
Even more ominous is Dell's drop in net profit margins. In the decade ending in 2006, Dell had a net profit margin of 6.2%. Last year it was 4.1% vs. Hewlett-Packard's 7%.
What differentiates Hewlett-Packard from Dell? Hewlett-Packard is perceived as the leader in personal computers. And "leadership" is the most important aspect of a marketing program. You lose your leadership (as Dell has done) and you lose your marketing power.
Dell used to mean "direct." What does Dell mean today?
A company with problems.
O is for 'opposite'
What if you can't be first in a new category? Is there no hope? Sure, there is. Just be the opposite of the brand that did get into the mind first.
Red Bull came in 8.3-oz. cans, so Monster came in 16-oz. cans and rapidly became the No. 2 energy-drink brand with 25% of the U.S. market.
A number of years ago, all perfume brands were feminine. So Revlon introduced "Charlie." For three straight years in a row, Charlie was the world's best-selling perfume.
The Home Depot is a messy, male-oriented home improvement warehouse, so Lowe's became neat, clean, female-oriented and a strong No. 2 brand.
Walmart is "cheap," so Target became "cheap chic" and a strong No. 2 brand. Stuck in the mushy middle was Kmart, which went bankrupt.
Coca-Cola is the old, established cola brand, the real thing. Your parents drank Coca-Cola. So Pepsi-Cola focused on the younger crowd. The Pepsi Generation. (An idea Pepsi needs to reprise.)
Look at the numbers. The last flickering of the Pepsi Generation idea was in 2002, when Pepsi-Cola ran the rather insipid campaign "Think young. Drink young." That was the year Pepsi was 35% behind Coca-Cola in sales. In 2003, Pepsi switched to: "The joy of Pepsi." In 2004: "It's the cola." In 2009: "Refresh everything."
Today, Pepsi is 41% behind Coca-Cola in sales.
In marketing, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why is this so? Because the rich generally own a word in the mind (leadership) and the poor do not.
Refresh everything? Pepsi should be trying to refresh something. My choice would have been the younger generation.
C is for 'category dominance'
What is the primary objective of a marketing program anyway? Is it to increase sales? To increase profits? To build a brand in consumers' minds?
All of these things are important, but they are only markers on the road to success. The primary objective of any marketing campaign is to dominate a category. When you can do that, your long-term success is almost guaranteed. (Until the category evaporates, but that's another story.)
Take Sony, for example. In a recent survey of 3,600 Asian consumers, the No.1 brand was Sony. In a recent survey of 1,500 American consumers, the No.1 brand was Sony.
Like most Japanese electronics companies, Sony is heavily line-extended. Sony puts its brand name on TV sets, videocassette recorders, digital cameras, personal computers, cellphones, semiconductors, camcorders, DVD players, MP3 players, stereos, broadcast video equipment, batteries and a host of other products.
In which categories is Sony the leader?
I don't know, and I'm pretty sure that most consumers don't know either. Sony's lack of a leadership perception in any individual category, in my opinion, is the reason for Sony's lackluster financial performance. In the past 10 years, Sony has had revenues of $681.6 billion and net profits after taxes of $9.5 billion, or a net profit margin of just 1.4%. Which is one reason Sir Howard Stringer is now Sony's CEO. (When a Japanese company is run by an Englishman, you know the Japanese company is in trouble.)
Compare Sony with Nintendo, the company that dominates the video-game player category. In the past 10 years, Nintendo has had revenues of $75.3 billion and net profits of $11.5 billion, or a net profit margin of an astonishing 15.3%.
Ask a few marketing managers which is the stronger brand, Sony or Nintendo? Don't be surprised if most of them say "Sony."
In category after category, well-known, highly admired global megabrands are trying to compete with narrowly focused brands. Invariably the narrowly focused brands are the winners.
Take Duracell, the leader in appliance batteries. Sony, Kodak, Toshiba and other companies with well-known brand names have tried to compete with Duracell in the battery business with little to show for their efforts. The category is the key to success. The brand is only a tool to facilitate that process.
V is for 'visual hammer'
The verbally oriented left-brainers who run most major companies don't seem to understand the power of a visual.
Take Boston Chicken, which early in its history changed its name to Boston Market and promptly went bankrupt. Why in the world would they have done that? Boston Chicken was the first food chain to feature "rotisserie chicken," an easy-to-visualize concept. But how do you visualize "market?"
Every brand needs two things: (1) A verbal nail to preempt a conceptual idea and (2) A visual hammer to hammer that conceptual idea into consumers' minds.
Some effective verbal nails and their associated visual hammers:
"The real thing" and the hobble-skirt Coke bottle.
"Marlboro country" and cowboys.
"Not from concentrate" and the straw in the orange.
"The shoe that breathes" and the smoke from a Geox.
"Engineered like no other car in the world" and the TriStar logotype.
"King of Beers" and the Clydesdales.
One important point: The verbal decision should come first, not the visual. That's true even though the visual is often more powerful than the verbal.
Take the Marlboro cowboy. While the American cowboy is a universally admired symbol, it would be useless for a brand that didn't want to hammer the "masculine" idea into consumers' minds.
The Budweiser frog and the Aflac duck are striking visuals, but what words do they hammer into prospects' minds? In Budweiser's case, the "Bud . . . weis . . . er" slogan was redundant. In Aflac's case, "We've got you under our wing" is a relatively weak slogan.
S is for 'second brands'
In the boardrooms of corporate America, you seldom hear the word "focus." A common perception is that focus means sacrifice, and what left-brained CEO wants to do that?
What you do hear a lot of is the word "expand." How do we expand our brand into more categories, more price points, more distribution outlets, etc.?
The FOCVS answer to that question is the "second brand." Keep your existing brand focused and launch a second brand to exploit a new market.
As Levi's did with Dockers.
As Toyota did with Lexus.
As Black & Decker did with DeWalt.
As Hanes did with L'eggs.
Another common perception is that the launch of a second brand requires a major advertising investment. Not true.
When you study the histories of famous brands, you are struck by how slowly those brands took off. That is true whether the brands were initially supported by massive advertising or not.
It took Red Bull nine years to reach $100 million in sales.
It took Microsoft 10 years to reach $100 million in sales.
It took Walmart 14 years to reach $100 million in sales.
It took Gatorade 18 years to reach $100 million in sales.
A successful new brand (Red Bull, for example) is usually based on a new category (energy drink.) At first, consumers are leery of buying such brands because they don't fit into existing buying patterns. Advertising doesn't have the credibility to break down those barriers.
The best way to launch a new brand is with PR. Unlike advertising, PR has credibility with many consumers. Then, too, PR drives word-of-mouth, which is the ultimate in brand credibility.
Since a PR campaign is usually far less expensive than an advertising campaign, PR is a better fit with the slow growth pattern of a new brand. Ultimately, of course, any new brand runs out of PR potential. That's the time to switch to advertising.
F . . . O . . . C . . . V . . . S. That's a summary of our marketing principles in a simple, easy-to-remember way.
To read more, please visit adage.com.
A number of people have asked us to summarize our marketing principles in a simple, easy-to-remember way. Good thought. Having written (or co-written) 11 books on the subject, I can see how our basic principles can get buried in a blizzard of examples and case histories.
What's the No. 1 principle of marketing, at least as far as we're concerned? It's the principle of focus. You narrow the focus in order to own a word in the mind of the consumer. Without a focus, it's very difficult to build a strong brand. And without a strong brand, any company's future is in doubt.
While focus should be the key ingredient in any marketing campaign, it's not the whole story. So we developed an acronym called FOCVS that does sum up our key thoughts. "FOCVS," a word using the original alphabet of the Roman Empire, consists of five key elements.
F is for 'first'
Nothing works better in marketing than being the first brand in a new category in the mind.
Starbucks in high-end coffee.
Red Bull in energy drinks.
BlackBerry in wireless e-mail.
There are two issues, however, that many people miss. The first issue is what we mean by being first. It's the first brand in the mind that matters, not the first brand in the category. Powells.com was the first internet bookstore, but not in the mind. The first brand in the mind was Amazon.
The second issue is focus. It's always possible to become the first brand in a new category by narrowing your focus.
Take Dell, which became the world's No. 1 brand of personal computer. Dell wasn't the first personal computer in the mind. (Apple, IBM and a host of other brands got into the mind long before Michael Dell's creation.) Dell Computer narrowed its focus to direct sales only, the first brand to do so. This was the key decision that made the Dell brand a worldwide success.
Dell didn't get started until 1984, nine years after the first personal computer hit the market. By 1984, the market was saturated with computer manufacturers. As Business Week reported in its Aug. 8, 1983, issue: "Pounding on corporate doors are more than 150 makers of personal computers."
Suppose you had said to one of these 150: "Let's narrow the focus to direct sales only." That's probably the opposite of what they wanted to do. "We need more distribution, not less," might have been the likely response.
It gets worse. In that same issue, Business Week reported: "Computer and office automation companies are beginning to pitch comprehensive office systems that offer everything from personal computers to large central computers as well as the communications to connect all the equipment. This list of companies includes Burroughs, Data General, Digital Equipment, International Business Machines, Sperry and Wang."
Narrow the focus? Everybody was doing exactly the opposite. Expansion, not contraction, was the order of the day.
It's also the order of today's day. You've probably noticed that Dell has joined the expansion crowd with predictable results.
What mystifies many marketing mavens is how two companies can use the same strategy with diametrically different results. One is successful; the other is not -- a mystery that can be solved by assuming that the successful company has superior products.
And we're left with the same old canard: The better product wins in the marketplace.
Hewlett-Packard is expanding its product line at the same rate as Dell. By 2006, the two companies had virtually identical worldwide PC market shares: Dell had 17.1%; Hewlett-Packard had 17%.
Three years later, Hewlett-Packard's market share is 19.9% and Dell's market share is 12.8%.
Even more ominous is Dell's drop in net profit margins. In the decade ending in 2006, Dell had a net profit margin of 6.2%. Last year it was 4.1% vs. Hewlett-Packard's 7%.
What differentiates Hewlett-Packard from Dell? Hewlett-Packard is perceived as the leader in personal computers. And "leadership" is the most important aspect of a marketing program. You lose your leadership (as Dell has done) and you lose your marketing power.
Dell used to mean "direct." What does Dell mean today?
A company with problems.
O is for 'opposite'
What if you can't be first in a new category? Is there no hope? Sure, there is. Just be the opposite of the brand that did get into the mind first.
Red Bull came in 8.3-oz. cans, so Monster came in 16-oz. cans and rapidly became the No. 2 energy-drink brand with 25% of the U.S. market.
A number of years ago, all perfume brands were feminine. So Revlon introduced "Charlie." For three straight years in a row, Charlie was the world's best-selling perfume.
The Home Depot is a messy, male-oriented home improvement warehouse, so Lowe's became neat, clean, female-oriented and a strong No. 2 brand.
Walmart is "cheap," so Target became "cheap chic" and a strong No. 2 brand. Stuck in the mushy middle was Kmart, which went bankrupt.
Coca-Cola is the old, established cola brand, the real thing. Your parents drank Coca-Cola. So Pepsi-Cola focused on the younger crowd. The Pepsi Generation. (An idea Pepsi needs to reprise.)
Look at the numbers. The last flickering of the Pepsi Generation idea was in 2002, when Pepsi-Cola ran the rather insipid campaign "Think young. Drink young." That was the year Pepsi was 35% behind Coca-Cola in sales. In 2003, Pepsi switched to: "The joy of Pepsi." In 2004: "It's the cola." In 2009: "Refresh everything."
Today, Pepsi is 41% behind Coca-Cola in sales.
In marketing, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why is this so? Because the rich generally own a word in the mind (leadership) and the poor do not.
Refresh everything? Pepsi should be trying to refresh something. My choice would have been the younger generation.
C is for 'category dominance'
What is the primary objective of a marketing program anyway? Is it to increase sales? To increase profits? To build a brand in consumers' minds?
All of these things are important, but they are only markers on the road to success. The primary objective of any marketing campaign is to dominate a category. When you can do that, your long-term success is almost guaranteed. (Until the category evaporates, but that's another story.)
Take Sony, for example. In a recent survey of 3,600 Asian consumers, the No.1 brand was Sony. In a recent survey of 1,500 American consumers, the No.1 brand was Sony.
Like most Japanese electronics companies, Sony is heavily line-extended. Sony puts its brand name on TV sets, videocassette recorders, digital cameras, personal computers, cellphones, semiconductors, camcorders, DVD players, MP3 players, stereos, broadcast video equipment, batteries and a host of other products.
In which categories is Sony the leader?
I don't know, and I'm pretty sure that most consumers don't know either. Sony's lack of a leadership perception in any individual category, in my opinion, is the reason for Sony's lackluster financial performance. In the past 10 years, Sony has had revenues of $681.6 billion and net profits after taxes of $9.5 billion, or a net profit margin of just 1.4%. Which is one reason Sir Howard Stringer is now Sony's CEO. (When a Japanese company is run by an Englishman, you know the Japanese company is in trouble.)
Compare Sony with Nintendo, the company that dominates the video-game player category. In the past 10 years, Nintendo has had revenues of $75.3 billion and net profits of $11.5 billion, or a net profit margin of an astonishing 15.3%.
Ask a few marketing managers which is the stronger brand, Sony or Nintendo? Don't be surprised if most of them say "Sony."
In category after category, well-known, highly admired global megabrands are trying to compete with narrowly focused brands. Invariably the narrowly focused brands are the winners.
Take Duracell, the leader in appliance batteries. Sony, Kodak, Toshiba and other companies with well-known brand names have tried to compete with Duracell in the battery business with little to show for their efforts. The category is the key to success. The brand is only a tool to facilitate that process.
V is for 'visual hammer'
The verbally oriented left-brainers who run most major companies don't seem to understand the power of a visual.
Take Boston Chicken, which early in its history changed its name to Boston Market and promptly went bankrupt. Why in the world would they have done that? Boston Chicken was the first food chain to feature "rotisserie chicken," an easy-to-visualize concept. But how do you visualize "market?"
Every brand needs two things: (1) A verbal nail to preempt a conceptual idea and (2) A visual hammer to hammer that conceptual idea into consumers' minds.
Some effective verbal nails and their associated visual hammers:
"The real thing" and the hobble-skirt Coke bottle.
"Marlboro country" and cowboys.
"Not from concentrate" and the straw in the orange.
"The shoe that breathes" and the smoke from a Geox.
"Engineered like no other car in the world" and the TriStar logotype.
"King of Beers" and the Clydesdales.
One important point: The verbal decision should come first, not the visual. That's true even though the visual is often more powerful than the verbal.
Take the Marlboro cowboy. While the American cowboy is a universally admired symbol, it would be useless for a brand that didn't want to hammer the "masculine" idea into consumers' minds.
The Budweiser frog and the Aflac duck are striking visuals, but what words do they hammer into prospects' minds? In Budweiser's case, the "Bud . . . weis . . . er" slogan was redundant. In Aflac's case, "We've got you under our wing" is a relatively weak slogan.
S is for 'second brands'
In the boardrooms of corporate America, you seldom hear the word "focus." A common perception is that focus means sacrifice, and what left-brained CEO wants to do that?
What you do hear a lot of is the word "expand." How do we expand our brand into more categories, more price points, more distribution outlets, etc.?
The FOCVS answer to that question is the "second brand." Keep your existing brand focused and launch a second brand to exploit a new market.
As Levi's did with Dockers.
As Toyota did with Lexus.
As Black & Decker did with DeWalt.
As Hanes did with L'eggs.
Another common perception is that the launch of a second brand requires a major advertising investment. Not true.
When you study the histories of famous brands, you are struck by how slowly those brands took off. That is true whether the brands were initially supported by massive advertising or not.
It took Red Bull nine years to reach $100 million in sales.
It took Microsoft 10 years to reach $100 million in sales.
It took Walmart 14 years to reach $100 million in sales.
It took Gatorade 18 years to reach $100 million in sales.
A successful new brand (Red Bull, for example) is usually based on a new category (energy drink.) At first, consumers are leery of buying such brands because they don't fit into existing buying patterns. Advertising doesn't have the credibility to break down those barriers.
The best way to launch a new brand is with PR. Unlike advertising, PR has credibility with many consumers. Then, too, PR drives word-of-mouth, which is the ultimate in brand credibility.
Since a PR campaign is usually far less expensive than an advertising campaign, PR is a better fit with the slow growth pattern of a new brand. Ultimately, of course, any new brand runs out of PR potential. That's the time to switch to advertising.
F . . . O . . . C . . . V . . . S. That's a summary of our marketing principles in a simple, easy-to-remember way.
To read more, please visit adage.com.
Interactive Strategies That Will Flourish (or Flop)
Brought to you by Daniel Flamberg
The dawn of a new year is an opportunity to look ahead and guess what will happen next. Some of these predictions just might catch you by surprise. Others might seem obvious, and some reflect my own perspective or pet peeves.
These 16 predictions are offered with wishes for happiness and health in 2010. (Thanks to Sherie Anderson who helped with research and front line analysis.)
The recession won't go away
2010 will be as financially challenging as 2009. Credit and employment will be tight. Every expense will be scrutinized and delayed if possible. Temps will trump full-time players, and everyone in every sector will be looking for a deal. Downward price pressure, enforced by bean counters eager to save their own jobs, will rule the marketing sector and probably the entire economy. Emphasis on new customer acquisition will change slightly to retention because it's cheaper and has a much greater ROI impact, though since so few marketers are good at retention, expect more propaganda than productivity.
Traditional big ad spenders -- banks, automotive, retail, airlines, and CPG -- will spend cautiously, flap their lips about CRM, experiment with social media, and find a hundred new ways to package and promote discounts and deals. B2B marketers will hunker down and stick to stuff that works with an occasional foray into social or mobile media to establish bragging rights behind a steady beat of plain vanilla efforts on the CRM front.
Facebook will flourish or flounder
Everything turns on the network's ability to maintain momentum, avoid more ham-fisted privacy flaps, and show marketers how to engage and interact with members in ways that don't feel like advertising. MySpace, with 70 million users, and Friendster have considerable reach and assets even though they've been eclipsed by Facebook's fast march and PR blitz. But frankly, no one really knows why Facebook has stormed ahead and in the absence of a sustainable formula, that growth and popularity could disappear as quickly as it come about. There are no doubts that Murdock's minions and many others are gunning to get back in the game, not to mention non-U.S. communities and vertical communities that have begun to show substantial growth.
Look for a horse race in terms of new applications, new features, or new functions and new ways to integrate or manage Facebook and other social media accounts into common work and life flows. People want to participate but are having difficulty managing different accounts or dealing with the time suck that social media has quickly become. A bunch of tools, possibly modeled after TweetDeck, will emerge to organize, manage, and connect different social media applications. Along with the tools, expect best practices to evolve for linking your profiles and friendships to achieve specific goals like finding a job, finding a love partner, generating leads, or seeding vertical conversations.
More brands will use social media as standing research panels by asking questions, soliciting opinions, or conducting polls and surveys. Some gut checks and qualitative research will move online because you can gather a carefully composed crowd quickly and cheaply and can target advocates, neutrals, and competitive users easily. Expect an explosion in A/B testing and even product development testing to take place online and on social media platforms.
Social monitoring and reputation management will grow
In the same vein, everyone will license a data-mining tool like Radian6 and collect the "sentiment" in social media. Interpreting this data will be tricky because the software was built on assumptions and filters that may or may not reflect users' reality. But acquiring a tool to mine social media will be the must-have new toy among marketing and IT types in 2010.
Individuals will soon start agitating for similar tools to monitor their presence, their reputations, and their vulnerabilities online. Partly privacy or security driven and partly vanity driven, people are beginning to understand and worry about how they are presented and/or exposed online. The combination of identity theft and phishing threats plus the need to present an appropriate image to potential employers and/or partners will create a need to check what's online, align what is searchable with who you want to be, and fix or delete the stuff you are unhappy with.
Passionate connections will rule
The explosion of social media reveals an underlying psychological reality -- people want to believe, want to belong, and want to be connected. We are social creatures, and we want to believe that our lives have meaning, that our actions matter, and that we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves. Brands that understand this articulated need and can respond to it or channel it will attract followers, fans, advocates, and customers. Brands who can speak passionately about things customers care about can do amazing things.
Marketers will refine applications for social media
Fans sign up to get deals according to the Razorfish FEED analysis. What isn't clear is exactly how brands can enter the conversation and display their wares without offending the sensibility of "friends" and others seeking just to connect and communicate. People don't click on the ads in social networks, and they resent brand messages that are artificially shoehorned into their conversation streams. There have to be ways to do it beyond offering to turn on new friends to a discount, but few have been reported.
Beyond collecting friends, the value of conversations for intelligence gathering, creating content, or managing customer service issues is still in its infancy. About 95 out of 100 Twitter members never tweet. Looking at pictures seems to be the most popular online activity. And we are beginning to understand dramatic differences in web and social media usage by gender. Social media is as much about voyeurism and feeling part of things as it is about actual participation. Marketers will use all these trends as launching points for campaigns next year.
Brands will experiment across social media platforms. Some will create major gaffes. Others will generate viral attention that just might pay off in terms of awareness, preference, or sell through. Now that the social channel has been firmly established, marketers are eager to understand to whom it connects them and how to use it to achieve business results. The social network that helps brands figure this out and builds creative guidelines and media packages that agencies and clients can understand and sell up the food chain will win massive cash investments.
Apps will shake out
There are 100,000+ smartphone apps. Most are novelties or crap. Those with scalability, utility, and genuine value will be talked about and heavily downloaded. The rest will rot. Given the large number of developers and easy accessibility to APIs, look for a steady stream of ideas that range from even more varied and refined fart sounds to very useful personal utilities to emerge as winners.
Brands will create endless numbers of apps seeking either first mover advantage or virility. Both will be very hard to achieve. Very few people have sustained needs for single brand or product applications, so look for mash-ups and aggregations to appear to super-serve vertical needs. Imagine a single app with all the known diabetes drugs on it or an app that searches the net for all the shoes in your size reflecting your style and price preferences.
Mobile media will putter along
Strangled by the technology, policies, and pricing of the big telecommunications carriers, mobile media will not break out in 2010. Instead, a few more brands will attempt to manage the Rube Goldberg-like configurations necessary to mount a mobile campaign that connects online and offline media and/or distributes coupons or discount codes.
At this point, mobile media is too much effort for too little pay-off for both marketers and consumers. Look for lifestyle brands to try the hardest, but don't expect inter-carrier compatibility, micro-payments, location-based campaigns, trigger promotions, live event interactions, or other phone-based utilities to come into being at any scale in the next 365 days.
We will feel the need for speed
The web has gone mobile, and increased smartphone penetration will create monstrous demand for mobile bandwidth. WiMax and other bandwidth solutions will soar as we demand more, faster access to sites on the go. This will also require more memory, more agile devices, and will require marketers to optimize sites for mobile access and usage. I'd invest in mobile-enabling software because 2010 will see a great shift from static sites to those configured and designed for mobile use. In a year no one will look at sites that break up, look bad, or load unevenly on iPhones, Blackberrys, or Droids. Everyone will expect to view videos, listen to music, and quickly search and download data from everywhere.
Search will get more specific
As people demand specific answers, not just websites, search will become more refined even as it expands to include video, images, and social media postings. Anticipate that vertical search engines will begin to deliver faster, more accurate results that begin to challenge Google and siphon off search dollars in selected industries. Look for advances in data mining and in the way search engines process huge volumes of information. AI and natural language advances will begin to make themselves known, though the hype will continue to outpace the results. Keep your eye on Wolfram Alpha, which is breaking new ground and lighting a fire under search experts in many ways. Don't be surprised if someone emerges out of nowhere with a completely different approach to generating search results that turns the market on its head.
Analytics and integration will be endlessly discussed
But no real progress will be made because both topics are directly related to organizational design and politics. Both topics are intensely threatening to the status quo. These topics are perennial strawmen for all manner of gurus, executives, and advertising specialists to debate. In reality, there is little real appetite for attacking either subject among marketers or ad agencies, though both devote massive amounts of lip service to the cause. 2010 will produce some new products and some new evangelists -- another round of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Email is old reliable
Email continues to reign as the most accepted and effective digital marketing medium. Privacy, opt-in, deliverability, formatting, and creative best practices have bred widespread consumer acceptance accompanied by decent sustained click-through rates and purchase ratios. Widely understood and widely used, there is research indicating that heavy social media users are equally heavy email users, even though social media has begun to replace email for personal communications among some (mostly younger) consumer segments. Email opt-ins routinely grow, as do the full range of responses and interactions from consumers. Email lists are becoming more available and easier to merge/purge or match back. Expect the email barrage to continue with increasingly sophisticated segmentation and personalization.
Grab your video camera
Video is the meme of choice online. It seems that everyone has and uses a video camera to upload all kinds of content online. In 2010, if you can't be found on YouTube and its competitors, you will be invisible. Look for considerable competition among sites vying to rank second. Watch vertical video sites attempt to increase their visibility, if not their utility or viewership. Video will move between and among channels. A YouTube video can easily appear on TMZ or Access Hollywood, and vice versa. News organizations and reality shows will mine online video routinely.
Also look for new ways to emerge to tell stories in video. There appears to be a very broad tolerance for homemade videos and video with very modest production value. Videos will be shorter and better tagged. Many will be clickable, and some brands will try to create (or re-create) a branded online serial aimed at their psycho-demographic target. The Holy Grail is still the video that achieves altitude and is virally passed to zillions around the world.
Syndication trumps destination
Expect brands to seek out syndication opportunities to distribute fully produced videos and to peel off segments and share them with a wide array of sites both to intercept audiences and to improve search disposition. Content and the distribution of content will act like media luring in new customers and validating existing clients. Brands will re-purpose, de-construct and mash-up assets like videos, images, copy blocks, polls, quizzes, white papers, and others, and will seek out venues to distribute them elsewhere on the web with link-backs to corporate and branded sites. This tactic will simultaneously increase the trolling area for prospects and customers and positively affect natural search results.
Get in the search game
Natural search has nothing on "Dungeons & Dragons" or "World of Warcraft" for mystery, suspense, competitiveness, and unpredictability. In fact, the best practitioners are the same guys. Search is the most intriguing marketing game by far where brand strategy meets technical prowess influenced by intuition and aggression.
The semantic web, policed by Google, is still the Wild West, where fortunes are made and lost in a nanosecond and where skillful manipulation rules the day. But the business impact of search is not frivolous. Given the widespread use of search and its relationship to brand awareness, preference, and purchase, mastering the semantic arts, understanding the need for careful tagging, and operationalizing the "taxonomy is destiny" mantra are critical goals for every brand.
Brands demand orchestration
Going to market is no longer a matter of crafting messages and buying media. Brands need to craft communications strategies that take into account the channels, the media, and the target mentality. Then, they must plan, design, parse, and orchestrate the messages over time, geography, and channels in the face of competitive activity and increasing noise-to-signal ratios.
We live in an always-on 24/7 mass media culture where the number and variety of stimuli is too many to count and where everyone has set their personal filters to filter out the vast majority of messages, offers, and ideas. Technology has enabled both the flow and the filtration, so marketers have to have a keen sense of the environment and the audience mindset in order to identify, reach, engage, and persuade customers. This is an act of composition and orchestration that is fundamentally different than before and that requires a much broader view of audiences, media, and creative assets.
Deeper data dives
It is finally occurring to brand marketers that a broad range of things can be predicted with accuracy on the basis of data and behavioral modeling. The recession has forced consideration of these "black arts" heretofore practiced only by direct marketers and data wonks that have developed a science around CRM and behavioral targeting.
The types, quality, and richness of consumer and B2B data collected legally and in compliance with privacy laws is staggering. Used for good by skilled data guys, these terabytes can dramatically improve customer engagement and satisfaction. Look for more brands to try deeper data dives in 2010, yielding better business results, though the number of true believers will remain the same.
Daniel Flamberg is managing partner at Booster Rocket.
The dawn of a new year is an opportunity to look ahead and guess what will happen next. Some of these predictions just might catch you by surprise. Others might seem obvious, and some reflect my own perspective or pet peeves.
These 16 predictions are offered with wishes for happiness and health in 2010. (Thanks to Sherie Anderson who helped with research and front line analysis.)
The recession won't go away
2010 will be as financially challenging as 2009. Credit and employment will be tight. Every expense will be scrutinized and delayed if possible. Temps will trump full-time players, and everyone in every sector will be looking for a deal. Downward price pressure, enforced by bean counters eager to save their own jobs, will rule the marketing sector and probably the entire economy. Emphasis on new customer acquisition will change slightly to retention because it's cheaper and has a much greater ROI impact, though since so few marketers are good at retention, expect more propaganda than productivity.
Traditional big ad spenders -- banks, automotive, retail, airlines, and CPG -- will spend cautiously, flap their lips about CRM, experiment with social media, and find a hundred new ways to package and promote discounts and deals. B2B marketers will hunker down and stick to stuff that works with an occasional foray into social or mobile media to establish bragging rights behind a steady beat of plain vanilla efforts on the CRM front.
Facebook will flourish or flounder
Everything turns on the network's ability to maintain momentum, avoid more ham-fisted privacy flaps, and show marketers how to engage and interact with members in ways that don't feel like advertising. MySpace, with 70 million users, and Friendster have considerable reach and assets even though they've been eclipsed by Facebook's fast march and PR blitz. But frankly, no one really knows why Facebook has stormed ahead and in the absence of a sustainable formula, that growth and popularity could disappear as quickly as it come about. There are no doubts that Murdock's minions and many others are gunning to get back in the game, not to mention non-U.S. communities and vertical communities that have begun to show substantial growth.
Look for a horse race in terms of new applications, new features, or new functions and new ways to integrate or manage Facebook and other social media accounts into common work and life flows. People want to participate but are having difficulty managing different accounts or dealing with the time suck that social media has quickly become. A bunch of tools, possibly modeled after TweetDeck, will emerge to organize, manage, and connect different social media applications. Along with the tools, expect best practices to evolve for linking your profiles and friendships to achieve specific goals like finding a job, finding a love partner, generating leads, or seeding vertical conversations.
More brands will use social media as standing research panels by asking questions, soliciting opinions, or conducting polls and surveys. Some gut checks and qualitative research will move online because you can gather a carefully composed crowd quickly and cheaply and can target advocates, neutrals, and competitive users easily. Expect an explosion in A/B testing and even product development testing to take place online and on social media platforms.
Social monitoring and reputation management will grow
In the same vein, everyone will license a data-mining tool like Radian6 and collect the "sentiment" in social media. Interpreting this data will be tricky because the software was built on assumptions and filters that may or may not reflect users' reality. But acquiring a tool to mine social media will be the must-have new toy among marketing and IT types in 2010.
Individuals will soon start agitating for similar tools to monitor their presence, their reputations, and their vulnerabilities online. Partly privacy or security driven and partly vanity driven, people are beginning to understand and worry about how they are presented and/or exposed online. The combination of identity theft and phishing threats plus the need to present an appropriate image to potential employers and/or partners will create a need to check what's online, align what is searchable with who you want to be, and fix or delete the stuff you are unhappy with.
Passionate connections will rule
The explosion of social media reveals an underlying psychological reality -- people want to believe, want to belong, and want to be connected. We are social creatures, and we want to believe that our lives have meaning, that our actions matter, and that we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves. Brands that understand this articulated need and can respond to it or channel it will attract followers, fans, advocates, and customers. Brands who can speak passionately about things customers care about can do amazing things.
Marketers will refine applications for social media
Fans sign up to get deals according to the Razorfish FEED analysis. What isn't clear is exactly how brands can enter the conversation and display their wares without offending the sensibility of "friends" and others seeking just to connect and communicate. People don't click on the ads in social networks, and they resent brand messages that are artificially shoehorned into their conversation streams. There have to be ways to do it beyond offering to turn on new friends to a discount, but few have been reported.
Beyond collecting friends, the value of conversations for intelligence gathering, creating content, or managing customer service issues is still in its infancy. About 95 out of 100 Twitter members never tweet. Looking at pictures seems to be the most popular online activity. And we are beginning to understand dramatic differences in web and social media usage by gender. Social media is as much about voyeurism and feeling part of things as it is about actual participation. Marketers will use all these trends as launching points for campaigns next year.
Brands will experiment across social media platforms. Some will create major gaffes. Others will generate viral attention that just might pay off in terms of awareness, preference, or sell through. Now that the social channel has been firmly established, marketers are eager to understand to whom it connects them and how to use it to achieve business results. The social network that helps brands figure this out and builds creative guidelines and media packages that agencies and clients can understand and sell up the food chain will win massive cash investments.
Apps will shake out
There are 100,000+ smartphone apps. Most are novelties or crap. Those with scalability, utility, and genuine value will be talked about and heavily downloaded. The rest will rot. Given the large number of developers and easy accessibility to APIs, look for a steady stream of ideas that range from even more varied and refined fart sounds to very useful personal utilities to emerge as winners.
Brands will create endless numbers of apps seeking either first mover advantage or virility. Both will be very hard to achieve. Very few people have sustained needs for single brand or product applications, so look for mash-ups and aggregations to appear to super-serve vertical needs. Imagine a single app with all the known diabetes drugs on it or an app that searches the net for all the shoes in your size reflecting your style and price preferences.
Mobile media will putter along
Strangled by the technology, policies, and pricing of the big telecommunications carriers, mobile media will not break out in 2010. Instead, a few more brands will attempt to manage the Rube Goldberg-like configurations necessary to mount a mobile campaign that connects online and offline media and/or distributes coupons or discount codes.
At this point, mobile media is too much effort for too little pay-off for both marketers and consumers. Look for lifestyle brands to try the hardest, but don't expect inter-carrier compatibility, micro-payments, location-based campaigns, trigger promotions, live event interactions, or other phone-based utilities to come into being at any scale in the next 365 days.
We will feel the need for speed
The web has gone mobile, and increased smartphone penetration will create monstrous demand for mobile bandwidth. WiMax and other bandwidth solutions will soar as we demand more, faster access to sites on the go. This will also require more memory, more agile devices, and will require marketers to optimize sites for mobile access and usage. I'd invest in mobile-enabling software because 2010 will see a great shift from static sites to those configured and designed for mobile use. In a year no one will look at sites that break up, look bad, or load unevenly on iPhones, Blackberrys, or Droids. Everyone will expect to view videos, listen to music, and quickly search and download data from everywhere.
Search will get more specific
As people demand specific answers, not just websites, search will become more refined even as it expands to include video, images, and social media postings. Anticipate that vertical search engines will begin to deliver faster, more accurate results that begin to challenge Google and siphon off search dollars in selected industries. Look for advances in data mining and in the way search engines process huge volumes of information. AI and natural language advances will begin to make themselves known, though the hype will continue to outpace the results. Keep your eye on Wolfram Alpha, which is breaking new ground and lighting a fire under search experts in many ways. Don't be surprised if someone emerges out of nowhere with a completely different approach to generating search results that turns the market on its head.
Analytics and integration will be endlessly discussed
But no real progress will be made because both topics are directly related to organizational design and politics. Both topics are intensely threatening to the status quo. These topics are perennial strawmen for all manner of gurus, executives, and advertising specialists to debate. In reality, there is little real appetite for attacking either subject among marketers or ad agencies, though both devote massive amounts of lip service to the cause. 2010 will produce some new products and some new evangelists -- another round of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Email is old reliable
Email continues to reign as the most accepted and effective digital marketing medium. Privacy, opt-in, deliverability, formatting, and creative best practices have bred widespread consumer acceptance accompanied by decent sustained click-through rates and purchase ratios. Widely understood and widely used, there is research indicating that heavy social media users are equally heavy email users, even though social media has begun to replace email for personal communications among some (mostly younger) consumer segments. Email opt-ins routinely grow, as do the full range of responses and interactions from consumers. Email lists are becoming more available and easier to merge/purge or match back. Expect the email barrage to continue with increasingly sophisticated segmentation and personalization.
Grab your video camera
Video is the meme of choice online. It seems that everyone has and uses a video camera to upload all kinds of content online. In 2010, if you can't be found on YouTube and its competitors, you will be invisible. Look for considerable competition among sites vying to rank second. Watch vertical video sites attempt to increase their visibility, if not their utility or viewership. Video will move between and among channels. A YouTube video can easily appear on TMZ or Access Hollywood, and vice versa. News organizations and reality shows will mine online video routinely.
Also look for new ways to emerge to tell stories in video. There appears to be a very broad tolerance for homemade videos and video with very modest production value. Videos will be shorter and better tagged. Many will be clickable, and some brands will try to create (or re-create) a branded online serial aimed at their psycho-demographic target. The Holy Grail is still the video that achieves altitude and is virally passed to zillions around the world.
Syndication trumps destination
Expect brands to seek out syndication opportunities to distribute fully produced videos and to peel off segments and share them with a wide array of sites both to intercept audiences and to improve search disposition. Content and the distribution of content will act like media luring in new customers and validating existing clients. Brands will re-purpose, de-construct and mash-up assets like videos, images, copy blocks, polls, quizzes, white papers, and others, and will seek out venues to distribute them elsewhere on the web with link-backs to corporate and branded sites. This tactic will simultaneously increase the trolling area for prospects and customers and positively affect natural search results.
Get in the search game
Natural search has nothing on "Dungeons & Dragons" or "World of Warcraft" for mystery, suspense, competitiveness, and unpredictability. In fact, the best practitioners are the same guys. Search is the most intriguing marketing game by far where brand strategy meets technical prowess influenced by intuition and aggression.
The semantic web, policed by Google, is still the Wild West, where fortunes are made and lost in a nanosecond and where skillful manipulation rules the day. But the business impact of search is not frivolous. Given the widespread use of search and its relationship to brand awareness, preference, and purchase, mastering the semantic arts, understanding the need for careful tagging, and operationalizing the "taxonomy is destiny" mantra are critical goals for every brand.
Brands demand orchestration
Going to market is no longer a matter of crafting messages and buying media. Brands need to craft communications strategies that take into account the channels, the media, and the target mentality. Then, they must plan, design, parse, and orchestrate the messages over time, geography, and channels in the face of competitive activity and increasing noise-to-signal ratios.
We live in an always-on 24/7 mass media culture where the number and variety of stimuli is too many to count and where everyone has set their personal filters to filter out the vast majority of messages, offers, and ideas. Technology has enabled both the flow and the filtration, so marketers have to have a keen sense of the environment and the audience mindset in order to identify, reach, engage, and persuade customers. This is an act of composition and orchestration that is fundamentally different than before and that requires a much broader view of audiences, media, and creative assets.
Deeper data dives
It is finally occurring to brand marketers that a broad range of things can be predicted with accuracy on the basis of data and behavioral modeling. The recession has forced consideration of these "black arts" heretofore practiced only by direct marketers and data wonks that have developed a science around CRM and behavioral targeting.
The types, quality, and richness of consumer and B2B data collected legally and in compliance with privacy laws is staggering. Used for good by skilled data guys, these terabytes can dramatically improve customer engagement and satisfaction. Look for more brands to try deeper data dives in 2010, yielding better business results, though the number of true believers will remain the same.
Daniel Flamberg is managing partner at Booster Rocket.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
SEO Tips for Smarter Social Media
Brought to you by Andreas Roell
Social media started as an underground college phenomenon. Of course, where there are people, marketers will go. And so, marketers entered into the environment. Social-media marketing was first viewed as a standalone strategy. As it gained mainstream momentum, marketers started incorporating it into a cohesive outreach plan. It started to serve the greater marketing good instead of cultivating relationships in isolation. Now, concrete statistics are being released that prove how social media can tangibly support marketing efforts and the bottom line. In October, MediaPost reported that users exposed to social media marketing are almost three times as likely to search using branded keyword terms. Furthermore, websites saw a 50 percent lift in click-through rates across the board when consumers had been exposed to social media and paid search.
There are unmistakable areas of marketing that social media support, such as customer service, brand awareness, and customer relationship management. But social media does more than keep you in contact with target audiences; it has additional, unexpected benefits across marketing channels. Forging relationships with users on social media has lasting impacts on how consumers find and relate to brands online.
Search engine optimization and marketing
At first glance, there isn't an obvious connection between social media and SEO. Social media stimulates off-site conversation and interaction, whereas search engine optimization aims to pull traffic to a website. That being said, social media does impact SEO efforts, especially in the area of link building.
Self promotion does not work well on social media, so marketers are faced with generating interesting content to share with their social audiences. This content is shared, distributed, and discussed on forums -- resulting in links. The more people referencing content, the more traction it will gain, and this buzz will drive consumers to search engines, where they be directed to branded web properties.
Social media also affords marketers the chance to create new, less competitive keywords to call their own. A great example of this is the wacky "Will it Blend?" video series for Blendtec blenders. These videos are widely circulated across social media, so product awareness is high. However, the odds of someone searching for a "blendtec blender" are slimmer than a user searching for "will it blend blender." In situations like this, marketers can and should plan out a search marketing strategy to capitalize on socially spurred keywords. Terms like "iPhone blender" will be less competitive, carry more brand value, and create a lasting impression with users. Three bonuses that marketers can use bring social users to their websites.
Beyond drawing social media traffic to a managed website, marketers need to afford users the chance to push website content out through their social spheres of influence. Doing so will have a direct impact on SEO and social media efforts.
While the adoption of "Share this" buttons is pervasive, there are other options that marketers can employ to boost search engine visibility. Providing users and bloggers with code to share and post content on your behalf will greatly enhance the reach of your content and increase in-bound links to your website. If you're running a promotion or contest, give users the tools to share their scores or customized content. If you host a popular blog, incorporate means for fellow bloggers to link to your post. Giving this option will build brand credibility because consumers are marketing on your behalf, and it builds a community of brand supporters.
SEO tips to keep in mind
Make sure the links you share via social media do not include tracking code that would prevent PageRank from being passed, otherwise no SEO value will be gained. If you're securing links, you should get credit for them. Also, when creating headlines for content -- blogs, articles, or otherwise -- make sure they are optimized with targeted keywords. If possible, try to optimize page titles independent of one another to get the most SEO value.
Paid search campaigns are also augmented by social media. As the Media Post statistics show, users engaged with brands via social media are likely to start their search queries using lower funnel terms. This can decrease a sales cycle because users can be directed to relevant landing pages that expedite their conversion. Similar to SEO keyword competition, lower funnel, branded PPC keywords are far less competitive and have higher conversion rates.
Social media on the move
Consumers are still reluctant about mobile marketing because they fear being bombarded by advertisers while they're out and about. But the overwhelming success of branded applications show that marketers have a mobile role to play, as long as they provide value.
If custom apps aren't a viable option, social media is another avenue for marketers to interact with their consumers on the go. EMarketer predicts that by 2010, 34 percent of mobile internet users will use social media on their phone. This is a sizeable opportunity for marketers. If they find their social niche and interact with consumers in a meaningful way, the Holy Grail of reaching mobile consumers can be discovered.
The top reason consumers engage with brands online is to gain access to exclusive promotions and specials. Taking this into consideration, marketers should incorporate mobile into their social strategy. If offers are timed correctly, they can impact social followers on their mobile devises. No matter what the strategy, the key has always been to provide value to customers on the go, without overtly interrupting them.
Using coupons of point of service/purchase applications, marketers can encourage customers to engage with them through social media and mobile marketing.
Thinking long term
Social media is a commitment. Time and resources are needed to keep a close watch on user sentiment, trending topics, and to be an active participant. This investment will most certainly pay off. Social media will keep your brand in front of influencers and provide search engines with new content to index. This will help your marketing cause in a number of ways because search engines will crawl your web properties more frequently. They will find press releases, product announcements, and blog posts more quickly, which means it will be in front of consumers in a timely manner. This also has a valuable long-term impact on SEO by increasing quality and quantity of website references.
The personal nature of social media will also do more than provide valuable consumer insights. It will enable marketers to identifying unique keywords through interactions that can be applied to search campaigns. Monitoring and tracking how consumers relate to you socially will provide further insight into their search intent and what phrases they use in search queries. By continually refining and evaluating search intent, marketers can ensure they're bidding on the right keywords that resonate with their user base and drive conversions.
Tying it all together
The ultimate thing to remember is that marketing is a holistic process. In traditional marketing, a commercial impacts brand awareness and in-store traffic. In digital marketing, social media marketing impacts brand awareness and SEO. Nothing operates in a silo, and the most successful marketers will continue to leverage the benefits of integrated plans including social media marketing and SEO.
Andreas Roell is president and CEO of Geary Interactive.
Social media started as an underground college phenomenon. Of course, where there are people, marketers will go. And so, marketers entered into the environment. Social-media marketing was first viewed as a standalone strategy. As it gained mainstream momentum, marketers started incorporating it into a cohesive outreach plan. It started to serve the greater marketing good instead of cultivating relationships in isolation. Now, concrete statistics are being released that prove how social media can tangibly support marketing efforts and the bottom line. In October, MediaPost reported that users exposed to social media marketing are almost three times as likely to search using branded keyword terms. Furthermore, websites saw a 50 percent lift in click-through rates across the board when consumers had been exposed to social media and paid search.
There are unmistakable areas of marketing that social media support, such as customer service, brand awareness, and customer relationship management. But social media does more than keep you in contact with target audiences; it has additional, unexpected benefits across marketing channels. Forging relationships with users on social media has lasting impacts on how consumers find and relate to brands online.
Search engine optimization and marketing
At first glance, there isn't an obvious connection between social media and SEO. Social media stimulates off-site conversation and interaction, whereas search engine optimization aims to pull traffic to a website. That being said, social media does impact SEO efforts, especially in the area of link building.
Self promotion does not work well on social media, so marketers are faced with generating interesting content to share with their social audiences. This content is shared, distributed, and discussed on forums -- resulting in links. The more people referencing content, the more traction it will gain, and this buzz will drive consumers to search engines, where they be directed to branded web properties.
Social media also affords marketers the chance to create new, less competitive keywords to call their own. A great example of this is the wacky "Will it Blend?" video series for Blendtec blenders. These videos are widely circulated across social media, so product awareness is high. However, the odds of someone searching for a "blendtec blender" are slimmer than a user searching for "will it blend blender." In situations like this, marketers can and should plan out a search marketing strategy to capitalize on socially spurred keywords. Terms like "iPhone blender" will be less competitive, carry more brand value, and create a lasting impression with users. Three bonuses that marketers can use bring social users to their websites.
Beyond drawing social media traffic to a managed website, marketers need to afford users the chance to push website content out through their social spheres of influence. Doing so will have a direct impact on SEO and social media efforts.
While the adoption of "Share this" buttons is pervasive, there are other options that marketers can employ to boost search engine visibility. Providing users and bloggers with code to share and post content on your behalf will greatly enhance the reach of your content and increase in-bound links to your website. If you're running a promotion or contest, give users the tools to share their scores or customized content. If you host a popular blog, incorporate means for fellow bloggers to link to your post. Giving this option will build brand credibility because consumers are marketing on your behalf, and it builds a community of brand supporters.
SEO tips to keep in mind
Make sure the links you share via social media do not include tracking code that would prevent PageRank from being passed, otherwise no SEO value will be gained. If you're securing links, you should get credit for them. Also, when creating headlines for content -- blogs, articles, or otherwise -- make sure they are optimized with targeted keywords. If possible, try to optimize page titles independent of one another to get the most SEO value.
Paid search campaigns are also augmented by social media. As the Media Post statistics show, users engaged with brands via social media are likely to start their search queries using lower funnel terms. This can decrease a sales cycle because users can be directed to relevant landing pages that expedite their conversion. Similar to SEO keyword competition, lower funnel, branded PPC keywords are far less competitive and have higher conversion rates.
Social media on the move
Consumers are still reluctant about mobile marketing because they fear being bombarded by advertisers while they're out and about. But the overwhelming success of branded applications show that marketers have a mobile role to play, as long as they provide value.
If custom apps aren't a viable option, social media is another avenue for marketers to interact with their consumers on the go. EMarketer predicts that by 2010, 34 percent of mobile internet users will use social media on their phone. This is a sizeable opportunity for marketers. If they find their social niche and interact with consumers in a meaningful way, the Holy Grail of reaching mobile consumers can be discovered.
The top reason consumers engage with brands online is to gain access to exclusive promotions and specials. Taking this into consideration, marketers should incorporate mobile into their social strategy. If offers are timed correctly, they can impact social followers on their mobile devises. No matter what the strategy, the key has always been to provide value to customers on the go, without overtly interrupting them.
Using coupons of point of service/purchase applications, marketers can encourage customers to engage with them through social media and mobile marketing.
Thinking long term
Social media is a commitment. Time and resources are needed to keep a close watch on user sentiment, trending topics, and to be an active participant. This investment will most certainly pay off. Social media will keep your brand in front of influencers and provide search engines with new content to index. This will help your marketing cause in a number of ways because search engines will crawl your web properties more frequently. They will find press releases, product announcements, and blog posts more quickly, which means it will be in front of consumers in a timely manner. This also has a valuable long-term impact on SEO by increasing quality and quantity of website references.
The personal nature of social media will also do more than provide valuable consumer insights. It will enable marketers to identifying unique keywords through interactions that can be applied to search campaigns. Monitoring and tracking how consumers relate to you socially will provide further insight into their search intent and what phrases they use in search queries. By continually refining and evaluating search intent, marketers can ensure they're bidding on the right keywords that resonate with their user base and drive conversions.
Tying it all together
The ultimate thing to remember is that marketing is a holistic process. In traditional marketing, a commercial impacts brand awareness and in-store traffic. In digital marketing, social media marketing impacts brand awareness and SEO. Nothing operates in a silo, and the most successful marketers will continue to leverage the benefits of integrated plans including social media marketing and SEO.
Andreas Roell is president and CEO of Geary Interactive.
Monday, January 4, 2010
6 Digital Agency Survival Tips for 2010
Brought to you by Liz Ross
It's that time of year again. Only a couple weeks ago, honey glazed ham, mashed potatoes, and fighting with hoards of people over $15 DVD players in the aisles of Wal-Mart was all the rage. And although the holidays are now behind us, two types of articles are still in season -- the first being the much anticipated and expected lists of the "best" and the "worst" campaigns, products, and songs of the year past. The other common article type consists of predictions and proclamations for the year ahead. This is one of the latter.
Looking to survive in the ever-changing agency world? What follows is some proverbial food for thought for digital agencies in 2010. I hope some of them prove to be valuable for you and your business.
And now, without further ado, here are top six agency survival tips for the coming year.
Stop calling yourself a "digital agency."
It is official: The world has changed. This means that it's no longer important or relevant to define ourselves and our agencies by the channels in which we execute. Everything is digital, and all communication is delivered through digital channels. With this being true, the very idea of a digital agency is irrelevant. Focus on creating an agency that derives its identity and culture from the creation of powerful, relevant stories that are based in real insight.
The pace of change is quickening -- keep moving.
We are living in a time of tremendous change, and we're exposed to volumes of data that can be almost completely indecipherable. We live in a culture that is occurring in real-time, all the time. This means that there is no delay. Ever. We order a Samsung flat-screen television, and we want it set up and in our living rooms immediately.
What does this mean for agencies in 2010? We must devise new and constructive methods for listening -- and more importantly, understanding. There is no shortage of tools on the market today meant to help us listen to the cacophony of conversations that are happening in the world. What is missing by and large, however, is the ability to understand what we are listening to. We must find better ways to understand context and nuance and identify insights that are true to the human condition but not necessarily obvious.
Never stop asking "why?"
In our business, it is very easy to fall into the trap of the "obvious-sight." I wrote earlier of the importance of not only listening but also understanding. This is true in all human relationships, yet we have become complacent about the identification of insights.
We can all agree that we have seen many a brief where the singular insight is "Moms love their kids," or my second favorite, "Mom is busy." While these are true, and essentially inarguable, they are not insights. If the truth is "Moms are busy," force yourself and your teams to ask "why?" If the answer is "because the kids have a lot of activities," ask "why" again. When the answer is "that it's important for them to be well-rounded human beings," once again, force yourself to ask "why." You get the idea. Having and fostering an insatiable curiosity about the human condition is what creates great marketing.
Stories are the currency of our business.
We can all get caught up in what we do. Shows like "Mad Men" perpetuate the idea that we are doing glamorous, important work that is sexy and even a little bit dangerous. For those of us who have been lucky enough to grace the lobby bar at Shutters in Santa Monica, it can sometimes feel as though we are doing something that deserves great respect and admiration. Almost as if we are celebrities ourselves. But this notion would be wrong.
We are storytellers, and it is no more complicated than that. If you think back to the earliest tribes of humans, stories connected us to one another and were the currency of culture and family. In essence, stories are our lifeblood and define who we are as people. Agencies have lost, for the most part, the love of a good story. We have been subsumed by tactics, technologies, and nifty ways to use Flash to make things sparkle and move.
One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is John Candy and Steve Martin in the hotel room in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." It's the scene where Steve Martin wakes up to John Candy snuggling him, and he utters the famous phrase, "Those aren't two pillows!" What happens after the line is what we should all take note of: Steve Martin unloads on John Candy in a mean-spirited, angry diatribe that could only happen after days of hideous travel mishaps. Steve Martin says to John Candy's character, "And by the way, when you tell a story, have a point! It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!"
Truer words could not be spoken where our business is concerned today. Agencies need to not only understand the art of the story, but also have reverence for the way in which the story is delivered. We owe it to ourselves, and to the people we ask to engage with our marketing programs, to write better stories. We need to create stories that go beyond a suburban mom getting her harried family out the door in the morning with hot toaster waffles in hand, or a young couple impressing the neighbors with a new car. We need to create stories that move, delight, and surprise us with their power and resonance. With the technology we have in-hand, it is incumbent upon us to create more surprising stories than ever before.
Don't divorce what we do as a business from who you are as a person.
As agency people, digital or otherwise, we can be a little cavalier about our own media habits. We create television commercials and use DVRs to obliterate them from our sight. We create banners and microsites that we never even visit. The days of people waiting to receive our messages are over. The only proof you need is in your own behavior. What was the last television commercial you watched or banner you clicked on? We comfort ourselves with the soothing refrain of "we are not the target" or "they're not like us." The good news is that they are more like "us" than ever before, and it would be richly rewarding to treat the people we are marketing to the same way we wish to be treated.
Often, this assertion can be perceived and misconstrued as an indictment of all marketing. It is not. There is a place for television, banners, microsites, and emails. It is important for brands to share their stories and help people understand how their products and services can fit into our lives. What is critical is that we have a conversation about what all of this means. Have an open dialogue about what is best for your client, and ultimately, the audience, and don't hold on to sacred cows. Everything should be in question, and it's our job to push the envelope of what is possible and what is good.
Innovation is the lifeblood of any organization
Finally, no agency (or company, really) will survive without a healthy understanding and respect for the importance of innovation. We collectively gaze in wonder at Google, a company that seems to have so much money that it can afford to innovate. Companies that expect, and even demand, innovation from their employees have happier employees, happier clients and, by extension, more money.
Look for specific and measurable ways to encourage people to innovate within your organization and be accepting and forward-looking when some, inevitably, fail. Change does not come out of a two-day offsite where everything is "figured out" and all the answers are clear. Change comes from a relentless, steady focus on forward motion and discovery.
Adopt a program like Google's, in which you allow people to spend some percentage of their time in exploration of things that interest them. Require them to share and report back to their teams and the company what they've learned and how they're thinking. Only then will you begin to understand that change isn't a singular event, but a constant flow of ideas and thoughts that will cumulatively reinvent the way we look at our world.
2010 should prove to be another exceptional year, and that is a very good thing. The only constant is change, and I for one, along with the teams at my agency, look forward to a spectacular year that will continue to shape and redefine our industry.
Here's to a great 2010.
Liz Ross is EVP and chief growth officer for Digitas U.S.
It's that time of year again. Only a couple weeks ago, honey glazed ham, mashed potatoes, and fighting with hoards of people over $15 DVD players in the aisles of Wal-Mart was all the rage. And although the holidays are now behind us, two types of articles are still in season -- the first being the much anticipated and expected lists of the "best" and the "worst" campaigns, products, and songs of the year past. The other common article type consists of predictions and proclamations for the year ahead. This is one of the latter.
Looking to survive in the ever-changing agency world? What follows is some proverbial food for thought for digital agencies in 2010. I hope some of them prove to be valuable for you and your business.
And now, without further ado, here are top six agency survival tips for the coming year.
Stop calling yourself a "digital agency."
It is official: The world has changed. This means that it's no longer important or relevant to define ourselves and our agencies by the channels in which we execute. Everything is digital, and all communication is delivered through digital channels. With this being true, the very idea of a digital agency is irrelevant. Focus on creating an agency that derives its identity and culture from the creation of powerful, relevant stories that are based in real insight.
The pace of change is quickening -- keep moving.
We are living in a time of tremendous change, and we're exposed to volumes of data that can be almost completely indecipherable. We live in a culture that is occurring in real-time, all the time. This means that there is no delay. Ever. We order a Samsung flat-screen television, and we want it set up and in our living rooms immediately.
What does this mean for agencies in 2010? We must devise new and constructive methods for listening -- and more importantly, understanding. There is no shortage of tools on the market today meant to help us listen to the cacophony of conversations that are happening in the world. What is missing by and large, however, is the ability to understand what we are listening to. We must find better ways to understand context and nuance and identify insights that are true to the human condition but not necessarily obvious.
Never stop asking "why?"
In our business, it is very easy to fall into the trap of the "obvious-sight." I wrote earlier of the importance of not only listening but also understanding. This is true in all human relationships, yet we have become complacent about the identification of insights.
We can all agree that we have seen many a brief where the singular insight is "Moms love their kids," or my second favorite, "Mom is busy." While these are true, and essentially inarguable, they are not insights. If the truth is "Moms are busy," force yourself and your teams to ask "why?" If the answer is "because the kids have a lot of activities," ask "why" again. When the answer is "that it's important for them to be well-rounded human beings," once again, force yourself to ask "why." You get the idea. Having and fostering an insatiable curiosity about the human condition is what creates great marketing.
Stories are the currency of our business.
We can all get caught up in what we do. Shows like "Mad Men" perpetuate the idea that we are doing glamorous, important work that is sexy and even a little bit dangerous. For those of us who have been lucky enough to grace the lobby bar at Shutters in Santa Monica, it can sometimes feel as though we are doing something that deserves great respect and admiration. Almost as if we are celebrities ourselves. But this notion would be wrong.
We are storytellers, and it is no more complicated than that. If you think back to the earliest tribes of humans, stories connected us to one another and were the currency of culture and family. In essence, stories are our lifeblood and define who we are as people. Agencies have lost, for the most part, the love of a good story. We have been subsumed by tactics, technologies, and nifty ways to use Flash to make things sparkle and move.
One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is John Candy and Steve Martin in the hotel room in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." It's the scene where Steve Martin wakes up to John Candy snuggling him, and he utters the famous phrase, "Those aren't two pillows!" What happens after the line is what we should all take note of: Steve Martin unloads on John Candy in a mean-spirited, angry diatribe that could only happen after days of hideous travel mishaps. Steve Martin says to John Candy's character, "And by the way, when you tell a story, have a point! It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!"
Truer words could not be spoken where our business is concerned today. Agencies need to not only understand the art of the story, but also have reverence for the way in which the story is delivered. We owe it to ourselves, and to the people we ask to engage with our marketing programs, to write better stories. We need to create stories that go beyond a suburban mom getting her harried family out the door in the morning with hot toaster waffles in hand, or a young couple impressing the neighbors with a new car. We need to create stories that move, delight, and surprise us with their power and resonance. With the technology we have in-hand, it is incumbent upon us to create more surprising stories than ever before.
Don't divorce what we do as a business from who you are as a person.
As agency people, digital or otherwise, we can be a little cavalier about our own media habits. We create television commercials and use DVRs to obliterate them from our sight. We create banners and microsites that we never even visit. The days of people waiting to receive our messages are over. The only proof you need is in your own behavior. What was the last television commercial you watched or banner you clicked on? We comfort ourselves with the soothing refrain of "we are not the target" or "they're not like us." The good news is that they are more like "us" than ever before, and it would be richly rewarding to treat the people we are marketing to the same way we wish to be treated.
Often, this assertion can be perceived and misconstrued as an indictment of all marketing. It is not. There is a place for television, banners, microsites, and emails. It is important for brands to share their stories and help people understand how their products and services can fit into our lives. What is critical is that we have a conversation about what all of this means. Have an open dialogue about what is best for your client, and ultimately, the audience, and don't hold on to sacred cows. Everything should be in question, and it's our job to push the envelope of what is possible and what is good.
Innovation is the lifeblood of any organization
Finally, no agency (or company, really) will survive without a healthy understanding and respect for the importance of innovation. We collectively gaze in wonder at Google, a company that seems to have so much money that it can afford to innovate. Companies that expect, and even demand, innovation from their employees have happier employees, happier clients and, by extension, more money.
Look for specific and measurable ways to encourage people to innovate within your organization and be accepting and forward-looking when some, inevitably, fail. Change does not come out of a two-day offsite where everything is "figured out" and all the answers are clear. Change comes from a relentless, steady focus on forward motion and discovery.
Adopt a program like Google's, in which you allow people to spend some percentage of their time in exploration of things that interest them. Require them to share and report back to their teams and the company what they've learned and how they're thinking. Only then will you begin to understand that change isn't a singular event, but a constant flow of ideas and thoughts that will cumulatively reinvent the way we look at our world.
2010 should prove to be another exceptional year, and that is a very good thing. The only constant is change, and I for one, along with the teams at my agency, look forward to a spectacular year that will continue to shape and redefine our industry.
Here's to a great 2010.
Liz Ross is EVP and chief growth officer for Digitas U.S.
The Perils of Ad-Supported Social Media
Brought to you by David Teitler
People who live in the tropics like to say, "If you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes." This is not dissimilar to the media business, where the "paradigms" have been shifting at such a fevered pitch that even the rational professionals might be tempted to bolt for the exits.
Like it or not, we are now in the accountability business and seemingly damned to a life of forever being challenged to prove our worth or be ridiculed (or worse) as serving an unnecessary function.
To an extent, this aspect of our chosen profession rings true. No one needs advertising to survive. You can't buy a peck of page views or a gallon of gross impressions. Advertising is, and forever will be, a conduit through which products and services are communicated to the masses in bite-size chunks and surrounded by content consumers find entertaining or intellectually stimulating. At least, this has been the case up until now.
Today we find ourselves at a crossroads. Social media has inverted the pyramid and is brilliant in its simplicity. It's just "conversation," with a history dating back to cave men grunting at each other in either threatening or friendly tones. Social media is essentially a means by which affinity groups can find each other and babble for as long as other like-minded individuals will listen without being limited by proximity or time.
The growing ubiquity of social media weaving its way into the fabric of our society has traditional media and advertising executives both excited and horrified at where this all might lead. Content providers are nervous because affinity groups can now find each other without needing them to serve as a conduit. Marketers and advertisers are not sure how to react because of being trained to communicate in staccato tones with definitive starts and stops. Social media, on the other hand, is free to flow, meander, and evolve at its own pace.
Let's face it: What do "Coke is it," "The Ultimate Driving Machine," or "Just do it" mean in a vacuum anyway? But, given 30 seconds of sight, sound, and motion or a four-color page, magic can happen, worlds can be created, and products can be sold. But, setting these slogans free to be discussed as part of a conversation that evolves as long as those participating want without an omnipresent third party -- how cool is that?
Why not let the genie out of the bottle and let both media and the advertising that supports it be free to morph and flow anywhere they please? The promise of a personalized nirvana where each person can evolve their own world shaped to their needs and be changed at their slightest whim lies ahead. It almost sounds like a media Garden of Eden. But, as with the original biblical story, there is an apple (and possible serpent) that cannot be ignored.
As we all know, the true nature of the human condition will invariably come into play. Blogs cannot live by affinity groups alone. Eventually, someone will want coffee and doughnuts with their conversation and someone will be needed to provide them. Marketers are figuring out ways to almost imperceptibly insert themselves into the conversation. Many of the best examples of social media sponsorships to date are so subtle and nuanced that brand affinity supposedly takes place with the "sponsor" deep in the background or seemingly not there at all.
Contrast this to more traditional forms of display advertising that are downright refreshing in how they will punch a consumer in the nose and say, "BUY MY BRAND!" Not optimal perhaps, but at least you know it's there and what it is trying to communicate -- at least most of the time. Please don't take these comments as a treatise on whether social media is good or evil. I believe the ultimate answer is that everything in moderation has its benefits.
In the "old days," media consumption patterns were defined in "quintiles" -- the heaviest media consumers were the top 20 percent, down to the lowest 20 percent. Directionally, as an advertising-supported medium, I would contend that social media is best used in reaching light media consumers -- those on the fringe whose interests are too numerous and/or too intense to be heavy consumers of "mass media." This type of consumer used to be served by "niche" publications -- a market segment that will, to my mind, be most adversely affected by the rising tide of "social" as a mainstream media.
Leading marketers are diving into social media but need to tread lightly. "Going viral" can cut both ways. Once the genie is out of the bottle, the promise and the curse is that social media can take on a life of its own and, when it inflects to the negative, it can be exceedingly difficult to contain without significant collateral damage. Unless tight controls are in place from the beginning, the risks associated with ad-supported social media might end up outweighing the benefits.
Don't get me wrong, by all means experiment -- but be judicious and respectful. The most active companies in the social media space have standing committees with senior PR, marketing, and general counsel executives to monitor the "buzz" being created by their social media initiatives.
Social media shows promise to eventually play a huge role in the ad-supported ecosystem but, in its current forms, is like juggling nitroglycerin. There should be an ever-present "handle with care" label to remind us of the potentially considerable downside risk involved. For the time being at least, the inherent dangers will keep it from reaching its full potential.
On the bright side, if we continue to take a step-wise/iterative approach to learning how social media can be harnessed for the greater good, it shows promise to be seen by history as one of the primary ad-supported communication developments to come out of the first decade of the 21st century.
David Teitler is founder and CEO of BlackBox Media.
People who live in the tropics like to say, "If you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes." This is not dissimilar to the media business, where the "paradigms" have been shifting at such a fevered pitch that even the rational professionals might be tempted to bolt for the exits.
Like it or not, we are now in the accountability business and seemingly damned to a life of forever being challenged to prove our worth or be ridiculed (or worse) as serving an unnecessary function.
To an extent, this aspect of our chosen profession rings true. No one needs advertising to survive. You can't buy a peck of page views or a gallon of gross impressions. Advertising is, and forever will be, a conduit through which products and services are communicated to the masses in bite-size chunks and surrounded by content consumers find entertaining or intellectually stimulating. At least, this has been the case up until now.
Today we find ourselves at a crossroads. Social media has inverted the pyramid and is brilliant in its simplicity. It's just "conversation," with a history dating back to cave men grunting at each other in either threatening or friendly tones. Social media is essentially a means by which affinity groups can find each other and babble for as long as other like-minded individuals will listen without being limited by proximity or time.
The growing ubiquity of social media weaving its way into the fabric of our society has traditional media and advertising executives both excited and horrified at where this all might lead. Content providers are nervous because affinity groups can now find each other without needing them to serve as a conduit. Marketers and advertisers are not sure how to react because of being trained to communicate in staccato tones with definitive starts and stops. Social media, on the other hand, is free to flow, meander, and evolve at its own pace.
Let's face it: What do "Coke is it," "The Ultimate Driving Machine," or "Just do it" mean in a vacuum anyway? But, given 30 seconds of sight, sound, and motion or a four-color page, magic can happen, worlds can be created, and products can be sold. But, setting these slogans free to be discussed as part of a conversation that evolves as long as those participating want without an omnipresent third party -- how cool is that?
Why not let the genie out of the bottle and let both media and the advertising that supports it be free to morph and flow anywhere they please? The promise of a personalized nirvana where each person can evolve their own world shaped to their needs and be changed at their slightest whim lies ahead. It almost sounds like a media Garden of Eden. But, as with the original biblical story, there is an apple (and possible serpent) that cannot be ignored.
As we all know, the true nature of the human condition will invariably come into play. Blogs cannot live by affinity groups alone. Eventually, someone will want coffee and doughnuts with their conversation and someone will be needed to provide them. Marketers are figuring out ways to almost imperceptibly insert themselves into the conversation. Many of the best examples of social media sponsorships to date are so subtle and nuanced that brand affinity supposedly takes place with the "sponsor" deep in the background or seemingly not there at all.
Contrast this to more traditional forms of display advertising that are downright refreshing in how they will punch a consumer in the nose and say, "BUY MY BRAND!" Not optimal perhaps, but at least you know it's there and what it is trying to communicate -- at least most of the time. Please don't take these comments as a treatise on whether social media is good or evil. I believe the ultimate answer is that everything in moderation has its benefits.
In the "old days," media consumption patterns were defined in "quintiles" -- the heaviest media consumers were the top 20 percent, down to the lowest 20 percent. Directionally, as an advertising-supported medium, I would contend that social media is best used in reaching light media consumers -- those on the fringe whose interests are too numerous and/or too intense to be heavy consumers of "mass media." This type of consumer used to be served by "niche" publications -- a market segment that will, to my mind, be most adversely affected by the rising tide of "social" as a mainstream media.
Leading marketers are diving into social media but need to tread lightly. "Going viral" can cut both ways. Once the genie is out of the bottle, the promise and the curse is that social media can take on a life of its own and, when it inflects to the negative, it can be exceedingly difficult to contain without significant collateral damage. Unless tight controls are in place from the beginning, the risks associated with ad-supported social media might end up outweighing the benefits.
Don't get me wrong, by all means experiment -- but be judicious and respectful. The most active companies in the social media space have standing committees with senior PR, marketing, and general counsel executives to monitor the "buzz" being created by their social media initiatives.
Social media shows promise to eventually play a huge role in the ad-supported ecosystem but, in its current forms, is like juggling nitroglycerin. There should be an ever-present "handle with care" label to remind us of the potentially considerable downside risk involved. For the time being at least, the inherent dangers will keep it from reaching its full potential.
On the bright side, if we continue to take a step-wise/iterative approach to learning how social media can be harnessed for the greater good, it shows promise to be seen by history as one of the primary ad-supported communication developments to come out of the first decade of the 21st century.
David Teitler is founder and CEO of BlackBox Media.
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