Category Archives: 21st Century Marketing

2 December, 2009 · 10:36 am

Ten Things Your Agency Prefers You Don’t Know: #1

An agency can’t give you a brand that you don’t already have.

There may have been a time when a brand was mostly defined by its marketing communications. If so, that time is long past. Advances in media savvy, information transparency, and brand choice have forced brands to live in the real world.

Underlying the social media push is the larger issue of transparency.  Trends in culture and technology have made it impossible for companies to have an artificial brand image that exists separately from everything else they do. A brand today is more defined by the quality and design of its products, how it’s sold, how well it interacts with its customers, and the type of people who manage it. Marketing messages are just one aspect of that larger brand behavior. How a brand acts has more long-term impact than what it says. And a brand cannot act consistently in a way that is inconsistent with the actual culture of the organization.

The true brand is defined by all the real stuff behind it. When people talk about great brands, the usual suspects include companies like Nike, Apple, or Southwest Airlines. There have been some great advertising campaigns associated with each of them. But the best of them only crystallized what was already inherent in their brands. Do you think that Phil Knight, Steve Jobs or Herb Kelleher needed their agency to define what they were about?

The best agencies are like skilled jewelers who design a setting to show off a stone to its best effect. They can’t create the stone, but they can bring out the best features. A company that comes to an agency and expects them to create who they are lacks a basic understanding of where a brand comes from.  Great communications can bring that true brand to life in ways that clarify or enhance it, but unless you are willing to turn over the management of your company to the agency, they can’t create something that isn’t there already.

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11 November, 2009 · 1:54 pm

Social Media is Hard Work

woman working outOne of the signs that you’re with people who don’t entirely understand the effective use of social media is when the conversation turns into a lengthy discussion about what tools to use. Should we ditch our blog and go entirely to Twitter? What’s the best video site? What’s a better monitoring tool Radian6 or Spiral16?

Making the tools the primary topic of discussion reflects the habits of the broadcast media world.   A 1993 media plan started by weighing the advantages of TV vs. print vs. radio vs. out-of-home.  After that was decided, the messages and programs were then crafted for the channels.  

Social media is more about fitting the tool to the task than the task to the tool. To fulfill its promise, social media requires companies to engage with customers and prospects on a non-trivial level. It requires reaching out to people for their support and ideas. It requires responding to them when they respond to you.  It requires keeping up on conversations that are happening in multiple places.  It is not that the tools are unimportant, it’s just that the success of social media efforts depends less on the tools and more on the effort behind them.  It’s a bit like working out.  Assessing whether spinning, swimming, or Tae Bo is the better method for getting in shape is less important than doing any one of them vigorously and consistently.

In the broadcast world, if you forced me to choose between having the best message placement (e.g. the best programs, the best locations, etc.) or the best messengers, I would probably pick the placement. In the social media world, if you forced me to choose between the best tools and best messengers, I would definitely pick the messengers.

The most important step in planning a social media program is understanding who you want to engage and why they would benefit from engaging with you. When it comes time to pick the tools, there are numerous sources to guide you (with the practical, experienced guidance of Jason Falls’ team at Social Media Explorer being high among them). But your ultimate success will depend more on the commitment you put into it than the specific tool you use.

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23 October, 2009 · 12:50 pm

Ten Things Your Agency Prefers You Don’t Know: #2

Square Peg in a Round Hole_0565The agency structure dictates the ideas you get.

Every agency makes the claim that they are media-neutral, fully integrated, 360, or some other catchphrase implying ideas that are bigger than any one channel. The intent is certainly there, but the very structure of the agency prevents it from happening.  Agencies have accumulated a full-time staff of people who need to be allocated if that agency is to survive as a business.  This is true for almost any type of agency, be it traditional, digital, or social. If you have a dozen copywriters on staff, you better be generating ideas that require a lot of copywriting. Similarly, it you have 3 Flash programmers on staff, you better be doing some Flash development.  So imagine a situation in which a traditional agency is on retainer with a client.  What is the likelihood that the agency will come back and recommend moving most of the budget into shopper marketing? Sure, the agency has shopper marketing in their holding company network, but moving the budget to them means the agency loses the bulk of their retainer. Will the agency reward the Account Director for slashing their retainer and putting agency staff in jeopardy? Of course not.  That’s why you’ll get the ideas that match the resources of the agency.

Related to this structural issue is the myth that agency creatives are focused on ideas that transcend channels. It reminds me of the “IT expert” that only shows up in movies. This fictional guy is equally adept at every computer application ever written, knows both hardware and software, has a PhD level understanding of encryption algorithms, and immediate access to every database on the planet.  Meanwhile, in real life, if you need help with a Mac version of Office, the PC guy in tech support can’t help you. Similarly, a creative brought up to think in terms of websites is not likely to start thinking about a marketing problem in terms of retail events. Another one highly skilled in the art of scripted :30 stories isn’t going to be comfortable crafting a social media program.

It is not a question of smarts, talent, or even intent. Architect Louis Sullivan expressed the adage that “form follows function.” In the case of agencies, function follows form.

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1 October, 2009 · 5:02 pm

The New Brand Building Materials

toolsInterbrand’s annual survey of the top brands in the world always creates some interesting discussion around how best to define brands and their value.  By a proprietary (i.e., fuzzy) methodology, they attempt to put a financial value on the brand. Many of the most valuable brands near the top of the list are the ones you’ve come to expect: Coca-Cola, Microsoft, McDonald’s, Disney, etc.

But there is a different cut on the rankings that reveals a profound statement on the current state of brand building. There are only four brands ranked in the top half of the list in 2009 that were not on the list at all five years ago.  Based on this rise from nowhere to top 50 in the world, you might characterize these as the companies that did the most brand building  in the last five years. These four brands are:

  • Google (#7)
  • H&M (#21)
  • UPS (#31)
  • Zara (#50)

 As you look at these all-star performers, I’d ask marketers to consider one question: what do you remember about their advertising campaigns over the last five years?

You may remember more than a few things for UPS, and it is fair to say they have been active and heavy advertisers in the past few years.  But it is quite a different story for the others. Google sells ads instead of buying them. For Spain-based retailer Zara, it is a bit of a trick question because they pride themselves on their “zero advertising” business plan. They built their business on “fast fashion” by which they can design, manufacture, and ship to a new product to shelf in less than three weeks. H&M is also a fast fashion brand, that does some promotional product advertising, but attracts most of its ardent followers from a never-ending cascade of new fashions that promises a whole new store every month.

We hear lots of stories of smaller brands that have used innovative marketing approaches to build a successful niche or score a quick hit. These companies tell an even more powerful story of becoming among the most valuable brands in the world while using few of the techniques we’ve come to associate with megabrands.

So as some ponder the question about what kind of advertising they should be doing — broadcast, online, mobile? — they might also ponder the question if they should do any advertising at all.  To be realistic, advertising is and always will be a powerful tool. But it is no clearly no longer the default tool for becoming a major consumer brand.

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4 September, 2009 · 12:31 pm

Impressing vs. Connecting

Cat & DogAs the world flocks to social media, it is important to remember that not every tool is right for every situation. On a tactical basis, Twitter is an excellent example of this. Just as nearly every marketer who wanted to look plugged-in 18 months ago was starting a blog, the same crew is now crushing on Twitter. Lost in this rush to appear like a modern marketer is even a cursory examination of what the tool is designed to do. As its heart, Twitter is an announcement vehicle disquised as a conversational vehicle.  It is ideal for passing along news, gossip, and funny quips. It is a mediocre vehicle for dialogue. Yet, I have heard many a marketer justify their Twitter efforts as a way to have a deeper conversation with their customers.

This begs the larger issue of using social media strategically, as part of a plan with real objectives other than to use the latest thing. To make the point, I’ll go so far as to say there are some companies for whom social media in general is a bad idea. Social media implies an effort to open up your brand to your consumer. It is about providing more ways to connect with people. But there are some brands for which connecting more intimately with their consumer would work against their basic strength.  That is because the success of some brands depends more on impressing people than on connecting with them.

High-end luxury and fashion brands in particular succeed to a large degree on their aloofness. The democracy of social media promises a degree of access that undercuts the sense of elitism that is central to these brands. Many brands succeed by instilling a sense that they are our friends or our supporters. But some succeed by instilling a sense that they are our superiors. To use an analogy from the pet world, not every brand should aspire to be a golden retriever — fun, bouncy, always happy to see you.  Some brands succeed better as the Russian Shorthair cat, keeping an elegant distance that makes each encounter a hard-earned pleasure.

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7 July, 2009 · 9:23 pm

Word of Mouth is Not a Channel

Personal InfluenceWord of mouth is the most powerful brand-building mechanism there is. This is not new, of course. The book on the left put rigorous data behind the idea that people were more influenced by their peers in marketing, politics, and fashion than they were by mass media. It is interesting to note that the book was published in 1955, and is well-known by most marketing researchers. That is why I am taken aback by people promoting word of mouth as the next big thing.

What is new is the means to witness, promote and harness word of mouth through digital social networks.  But this does not change the fundamental challenge to marketers, which is finding a way to generate genuine word of mouth in the first place. True word of mouth happens when a potential customer gets a sincere recommendation from someone they trust. True word of mouth cannot be generated directly by a company. If it is, it loses the sincerity and trust that make it so powerful. Instead, it has to do something that makes that trusted influencer want to recommend their product. High product quality might do that, mass media might do that, database marketing might do that, great customer service might do that, a viral video might do that. These are all marketing channels. They are all means to influence the influencers.

When new firms try to position themselves as Word of Mouth agencies, the trick is to find out what they really do. How do they generate word of mouth? If they say by creating buzz in the mediasphere, then they are a PR company. If they say by identifying influencers most likely to be the source of recommendations to others, they are a database marketing company. If they say by creating unique brand experiences, they are an events company. Word of Mouth is an end, not a means. It still falls on marketers to find and use the tools they need to make true word of mouth happen.

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