01/17/11
Building demand for demand.
Recently, I was introduced to a study regarding the stock market. It proved a simple, yet revolutionary concept: stocks are more about picking what others deem as popular rather than choosing your own preference.
The experiment went like this: Three videos were shown to thousands of participants. The videos consisted of cute animals. The participants were split into two groups: those that selected their OWN preference for cutest video, and those that were asked to predict what EVERYONE ELSE would choose.
From Group A, a video of a kitten received 54% of the votes.
76% of Group B predicted that the kitten would be selected.
The difference isn’t contradictory – in fact it’s predictable. But the difference in the groups creates an artificial (yet very real) 22% difference. In other words, if those videos were stocks, the kitten video would increase 22% more than the market dictates because people and institutions buy stocks based on predicting other people’s decisions – not their own.
This 22% spread explains why bubbles occur in the stock market, and how manias happen. When you pick based on other’s opinions, you get a skewed view of demand – and a very real momentum is created. Demand builds demand as popularity skews the decision making process.
All this got me to thinking: how does this relate to brand demand? After all, it is our job to create demand, and build a buzz that helps inflate preference. In other words, we take your video and make it the cutest in order to get preference AND build demand for demand.
Why do people drink Coke vs. Pepsi? I’d be willing to bet that there is a major percentage spread of people that drink it because others do. Why do people choose the bigger, more well-known brand vs. a lesser known one? Because they want to be on the winning team, making the most popular decision. It’s human nature.
Demand creates inflated demand. Brand differentiation and dominance helps create demand for demand.
How does this get applied in real world? Sometimes ROI is not the point - pure dominance is the point. The brand with the largest presence doesn’t beat out #2 by small margin. The small margin creates an artificially larger margin created by perception, which is why you rarely see #1 and #2 as close competitors. Brand dominance creates demand for demand, with translates to market dominance.
In other words, it’s time to be the cuter kitty.
10/26/10
Campaign thinking v. brand thinking.
There is a fundamental issue that keeps coming up in our industry. We’ve heard it from potential clients. We’ve seen it time and time again in the marketplace. And brands continue to paint themselves in a corner by not understanding the sometimes subtle, sometimes stark difference between building a brand and executing a campaign. The basic premise is this: your brand transcends any initiative or moment in time. It is the foundation for which a campaign is launched, but the reverse should never be true. A campaign, built in a vacuum, might be perfectly effective for a time, but creates brand chaos if not built as part of the larger brand story. We find that the “older school” the agency, the more likely they will approach any assignment through campaign thinking first. How will you know? Breaking it down simplistically:
Campaign thinking:
Reacts to your latest initiative without regard to brand foundation.
Brand thinking:
Takes the long view. Includes never-wavering brand values. It creates your position in the marketplace that you are committed to staking.
Campaign thinking:
What’s hot right now. How can I best take advantage? This is appropriate, but can never be at the risk of becoming your brand.
Brand thinking:
What will always be relevant. What are you going to be in 5 years, 10 years? Is it accommodating?
Campaign thinking:
A new tagline every media budget cycle.
Brand thinking:
A tagline that will last 10-plus years.
Campaign thinking:
Starting from scratch every year. Advertising the latest feature.
Brand thinking:
Creating a community, building a fan base. Communicating a customer-centric thought.
Campaign thinking:
Traditional agency thinking: find a way to reinvent (and thus re-invoice) every year.
Brand thinking:
New agency standard: Stewardship. Finding a way to simplify and clarify over time.
Campaign thinking:
Reacting to competitors, treating them as moving targets.
Brand thinking:
Transcending your competitors. Inventing a new language. Creating a new standard and living up to it.
Campaign thinking:
RFP/spec work/creative shoot out.
Brand thinking:
Gathering voice of customer. Testing. Being patient. Crafting a solution based on information.
Campaign thinking:
Media-specific application.
Brand thinking:
Transcends media choices. Applicable to any.
You get the idea. But don’t get me wrong - the two ways of thinking are not mutually exclusive. Brand thinking still requires highly creative campaigns, but it insists that you do so in a manner that is consistent, informed, and will fit into a larger dialogue.
At least that’s our thinking.
10/28/09
Emergence and marketing.
Marketing seems simple. But in all reality, it’s an extremely complex system of pushing, pulling, experiences, word of mouth, face-to-face, sights, sounds, feelings. Put on top of this the fact that all of these transactions are highly personal, and are multiplied across a large population. To think that you can control this is futile, but these complex systems generally form fairly straightforward and trackable patterns.
In comes the theory of emergence. A simple explanation of emergence is that an emergent behavior or emergent property can appear when a number of simple agents operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective. You begin to discern patterns based on the big picture of the complexity. In marketing, human behavior differs greatly individually, but the sum total of activity and movement can become predictable and repeatable.
What can be learned from emergence theory when applied to marketing? You need a few key things to help ensure success:
- You need to learn as much as possible from as large a sampling as possible before you begin. The purpose of truly good surveys is to discern trends and patterns through disparate answers. Therefore, individual answers are meaningless, but the sum total is the true guide.
- Crafting a communications plan must cover enough venues to create multiple paths to the same conclusion. Since people act individually, you cannot assume that even a successful campaign worked to engage enough people for a sustained effect. Instead, there have to be enough points of contact to create a tapestry of communications in order to connect this complex world of individuals.
- There needs to be some heavy-duty analytics available to take in all the information. With so much happening so quickly, emergent systems are hard to predict. But through today’s technology, they can be relatively simple to track. There will be no two success stories that will happen in exactly the same way. However, there will arise patterns that appear as trends, and therefore can be replicated and expanded.
Many organizations fall prey to the “one resounding success” syndrome, where they try to replicate lightning in a bottle by looking at a success sampling of one. This may prove to be disastrous because the overall pattern may differ greatly from the one experience. The next potential success may be out there, ready to capture. But it may look entirely different from the previous. And there may be several in between, somewhere in the complexity of how people live, decide, and purchase.
08/13/09
The answer is simple.
Nearly every situation and organization we walk into shares a common theme: communications have become more complex, more layered, and the sales process has gotten murky and difficult to manage. The common problem? The company is way too close to the products and services, and the day-to-day operation and politics. More often than not, we are there to simplify.
Easier said than done? Absolutely. Stakeholders talk about the reasons why they cannot change using similar language and patterns. Generally, it is people who are so passionate about their one piece of the pie that they fail to see the other pieces and their own individual passions. Our biggest early challenge is getting people to see the big picture and understand the greater purpose of the organization.
First, we strip away the years of cobwebs: the politics, the outdated reasoning, turn over of people – all the things that lead to an inward-looking organization. Then we talk with customers: the current ones, some prospects, and a few that left. We find out the true pain points vs. the ones that seem to be prevalent from the inside looking out.
A common thing that we find is that the company is no longer capable of seeing past the day-to-day tasks. Even mission and vision sessions have diminishing returns almost immediately because of their lack of implementation and tangible results. Unless the outside world sees your reason for being, it really doesn’t matter at all.
Too many companies also just go through a cosmetic rebrand. That is, they paint over the cracked paint and think they have made a difference. A true rebrand goes deep: scrapes the old paint off, sands thoroughly, cleans up, and then starts to repaint once again
It takes a lot more work, but the result is always cleaner, simpler, more evident to the outside world, and far more sustainable. And it begins to pay dividends right away.
08/4/09
Stop marketing. Start “marking”.
In the traditional world, marketing has been all about push. Just send out as many things to an audience as possible and hit them until they start paying attention. But people have changed. Now, it’s about creating a brand that makes a mark in someone’s mind so that a customer is drawn to you. You must create a gravitational pull toward your brand – and leaving a solid mark in a potential customer’s mind is the only way to do it.
How can this be accomplished? It’s a change of mindset. You must think of your brand as a living entity, capable of conversation and engagement instead of just standing on a soapbox and yelling. It must have the ability to respond, react, answer, and build a relationship.
Where do you begin? Make certain you have something important to say. This happens just like any other conversation you have in life – you’d better understand your audience inside and out. Don’t assume they just care about “value” or “quality”. Maybe they care more about intelligence and consistency. Once you begin the conversation, you need to give people a place to respond and engage. This type of communication will help imprint you in their minds, building trust, and gaining entry into your psyche in powerful ways. Once you have this trust with customers, the sale has already been made, and you only have to be available instead of needing to inundate.
We call it marking. Which is much more complex and nuanced than marketing.
In many ways it’s much more complicated to execute. But once it’s underway, it feels far more natural and empowering to both you and your prospects.
07/23/09
Does your brand need work?
When a brand let’s itself go, there isn’t a defining moment. It’s a series of almost unseen, unremarkable moments. The best brands in the world can head down a slippery slope quickly if they aren’t cared for on a daily, weekly, monthly, annual basis.
- You have no idea what’s on your own company’s website. You haven’t been there in months. You don’t really want to go there right now.
- You currently present using a 7th generation PowerPoint. You click to see the original author. You don’t recognize the name.
- You always frame what your company does by first saying “we used to”.
- You search for your company on Google News and the most recent item is a press release from 2003 announcing that your company hired someone who hasn’t worked there since 2005.
- You have lost more than 5 consecutive pitches. In at least one of them, you were asked the question, “what makes you different?” You then inadvertently explain why you’re exactly the same, just a little less dynamic or interesting.
- Your business card was once a proud hand out – 2 sided, thick, uncoated, and well designed. Now, it’s a fourth generation card on a flimsy stock that is glossy and has basic information listed in a font that simply doesn’t belong.
- You used to get tons of calls to the HR department with people excited to work at your company. Now, those calls are all outbound.
- Your trade show booth was once a Mecca of activity and excitement. Now, it’s a heavy, overproduced, out-dated monument to the late 90’s.
- You cut your prices recently. And then again. If you can’t beat ‘em, undersell them.
- You dreaded waking up and going into work today. And every day. Not due to lack of interest. Just lack of vision and direction.
07/13/09
Advertising through Social Networking?
“Paid advertising on online social networks in the US is expected to fall 3% in 2009.” (eMarketer, 2009)
With all of the attention and buzz social networking has received, that may come as a shock to many, and as an “I told you so” to those inherently skeptical of the medium.
Many companies are clearly still trying to find their way with social networking. It appears that some have a presence on Facebook or Twitter for no other reason than that they feel they should. However, other companies have seen great success in targeting and reaching both niche audiences and in more broad consumer based initiatives.
We feel that the pull back is temporary as companies refine and integrate their efforts, and that social networking will have a major role in the advertising mix going forward.
2009 may be considered the year that companies worked to develop their presence within social networking sites, establishing content and fleshing out their environments. To us, this is a logical first step, which must be taken before more proactively advertising and working to draw new people.
Because it is such a new and emerging medium, we believe many companies are waiting to see which will take the lead (Facebook? Twitter?), and which will fall off the map (MySpace)? This will allow them to better focus their efforts, and not feel they need to be redundant with ad dollars spent and information/content they generate and share.
Once companies become more comfortable with social networking, it’s natural that they may circle back and work to see how to best integrate with their advertising/marketing efforts. When they do, they will find that they have a wealth of information at their fingertips, including deep data to target users (friend networks, likes, dislikes, and much much more).
Companies will learn to harness this data to deliver custom advertising that works on a more conversational, one-on-one manner. This is not your traditional mass communication, rather, it’s a more nuanced, information based approach that will allow companies to micro target and communicate like never before.
Advertising, B-to-B, B-to-C, Community, Interactive, Opinion
06/25/09
Rebranding: Internal v. External
In the dozens upon dozens of major rebranding engagements and efforts we've been involved with, one thing has become exceedingly clear: rebranding an organization is equally important within the walls as it is to the outside world.
There is nothing quite like cutting through the clutter and showing a company what it looks, sounds, and acts like at its finest. It gets people re-energized. It gets them on the same page. It makes them want to become the company they see in front of them. It is motivational. It builds aspiration. And, more than anything, it gets people excited to go to work again.
In order to see why organizations crave a strong brand internally, let us quickly break down the lifecycle of an organization that leads down the path to status quo. This is the case of several companies we’ve worked with.
- The company is formed with an entrepreneurial spirit and a clear vision and passion, generally created by one individual.
- The company grows, and this individual shares his contagious spirit and wills the company to success.
- The owner sells to a larger organization, leaves the organization, stops day-to-day activity, etc.
- The company is left with a series of systems but no real soul or driving force. The brand reflects a “good enough” mentality but does not reflect any passion or sense of exceptionality.
- This goes on for some time. The brand becomes more and more internally focused on “what we do” vs. “why we exist for our customers”. Major difference.
- The company gets more and more layered, with more services/products, new departments, new technologies, etc. There are acquisitions, partnerships, business changes. All adding new personalities, layers, and needs.
- The business goes on cruise control on every level. Mission, vision, and values are created, but they are generally clichéd and empty. The outside world starts to lose touch.
- The brand starts to reflect a certain “say nothing” mentality. The internal staff, while still committed and passionate about their individual positions, has an increasingly difficult time when asked “what does your company do?”
- Internally, correction is attempted. Through meetings, retreats, and other common methods, a “reason for being” is attempted to be recaptured. Unfortunately, it is through people who are too close to it, have seen too many of these steps, and who have a vested interest in their own “piece” of the puzzle rather than the big picture.
That is why companies like ours exist. We are able to get to the deep issues, connect dots, and see the company from a 30,000 foot perspective. We can then start to rebuild the energy and thought that went into #1, no matter how big or diffused the company has become.
This is done in order to communicate to the outside world. But every single time, our effect within the walls of the organization is just as great. This, in turn, leads to an organization that lives up to its new, re-energized brand promise.
05/28/09
11 thoughts for 11 years.
As I celebrate 11 years of being in business, I look back on some of the things I’ve learned.
- We get better every day. Back in 1998, I thought I knew everything there was to know about advertising. All I really knew was how to win awards. That is not the same thing as helping our clients prosper by any stretch. Every day, I learn something that we can apply across our client spectrum to improve their business.
- The client knows more than we do. We used to walk into a room and try to out-passion people about their own businesses. This is not our job. Our job is to take their passion, help take it to the next level, and help it spread in the marketplace.
- Technology should be wrapped around fundamentals. I’ve seen web firms come and go. I’ve seen online ad agencies come and go. I’ve seen SEO companies come and go. Hell, I even recall a couple of Second Life agencies. Technology has grown so much in the last 11 years, and even in the last 11 minutes. But technology is a means to deliver proven marketing fundamentals. It is not a fundamental on its own.
- The good days are good. Getting new business. Launching a campaign after months of work. Presenting a client with a plan and a vision and a brand that gets them re-excited about why they come to work every day. Those are good days, and they make it well worth it. Heck, they even make up for the….
- The bad days are really bad. Getting a budget cut. Not getting paid for our work. Winning a pitch and then finding out it wasn’t funded. Losing business for all the wrong reasons. Internal issues. These are the bad days. And they can really wear on you in this business.
- We get to meet some of the coolest people on the planet. Celebrities. Industry movers and shakers. People with little more than an incredible idea. Their stories are so different, but remarkably inspiring. There is no other business I can think of that allows such access to unique stories, goals, visions, and dreams within deep, meaningful relationships.
- You’ve got to have fun. As a small office, we tend to drive each other insane. So we have office games (including this one called Mickless that is so perfect, I believe I could sell the concept). We joke. We rib. And we get an incredible amount of good work done on behalf of dozens of clients.
- Take a long view of successes. When I think of client engagements, 11 years gives you the ability to see not only what worked immediately, but also what is sustainable from a marketing perspective. Every agency shows you their success stories. I’m not afraid to show failures as well. After all, are you going to trust someone who claims to have never failed? How then, have they ever learned to succeed?
- Times will always be tough. The last 11 years in the State of
- Share more. I used to be afraid of letting go. Letting go of industry secrets. Of the special sauce. Of our client list. Of relationships with other partners. It took me a while to see the light, but the more you give, the more you get back. So now I share freely, ask frequently, and open my business to anyone who wants to look. If you can replicate it, go for it. But you can’t.
- Eleven things on a list? Unnecessary. Brevity is still king. If you can’t sum up things quickly, you’re doing it wrong. This blog post has gone on way too long, and if I’m being honest, there was diminishing returns after about 4.
05/26/09
Viral marketing: Catching lightning in a bottle.
In meetings, seminars, and even the occasional new business presentation, we get asked the following questions more than a few times:
- How can we get seen on YouTube?
- Can’t we just create something viral?
Both questions are pointing to the same underlying questions. How can one create something viral and ensure that it is seen everywhere? And furthermore, without a budget to back it up? Answer: can’t be done.
Consider the following stats:
- Every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube (YouTube.com)
- Some 53% of YouTube's videos have fewer than 500 views (TubeMogul)
- About 30% have less than 100 views (TubeMogul)
- Just 0.33% have more than 1 million views (TubeMogul)
In other words, you can’t ever count on anything becoming viral. It happens more organically, and in a less controlled manner than you can possibly image. Plus, without the benefit of sending people there via a more traditional media buy, it may never be seen.
If a video gets posted on YouTube and no one watches it, is it still a video?
YouTube is a perfectly good tool. But again, it is not a plan. Your odds of having something take off on YouTube are about the same as winning the lottery. Is that how you’d like to conduct business?
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