Monthly Archives: August 2013

Two Joshes.

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Over the last few days I’ve met with two really smart Joshes. Okay, one Josh and one Joshua. Both gentlemen live and work in digital and media realms and both were nice enough to hear about “Twitch Point Planning.”  A twitch is a media moment during which a user leaves one media or device for another in search of more information or richer clarification. Twitch Point Planning attempts to intercept them at these moments and put in their way some branded value, moving them user closer to a sale. Of course, it must be done elegantly and with a contributory vibe.

The two Joshes told me it’s time to get out of theory land and into practice land.  Advice I’ve been giving to marketers for years. There is talk and there are deeds and only the latter create true muscle memory for consumers.

Since these two gentlemen are digital natives and work in marketing worlds catalyzed by big data, they’re also looking for evidentiary data. “65% of TV watchers who twitch to a retail site on Foursquare buy from its brick and mortar store within 4 days” kind of stuff.

Okay, I preach it but have failed to practice it. Shame on me. Off to practice.  Off to data point. Thank your Josh. Thank you Joshua.

Peace!

When is an object an ad?

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I was running near Southards Pond the other day and saw up in a tree a nice pine board birdhouse. A friend of mine makes birdhouses using his table saw and untrimmed logs. Logs with bark still on them.  They’re amazing.  The word rustic comes to mind. I got him on Etsy and he moved some merch. The houses are so unique you want to stop running or walking and get a closer look.

Rather than print out a color picture, laminate it and attach peel-off telephone numbers, in a pseudo guerilla marketing effort – a ham handed one, at that – why not put a house up at eye level with a subtle URL burned into the wood. Small, like a painter’s signature. Make it feel more like art than commerce. I don’t need to do an A/B test to find out which approach would work better. Ham-handed would sell some houses quickly and be removed from the trail. 

A rustic product needs a rustic approach. Redefine how and where you put your product sale and message. Pick your spots and your tactics carefully. Kirshenbaum and Bond once did ads for Snapple where they put stickers on fresh mangos in the grocery store that read “Also available in Snapple.”

Peace.

 

Poetry in Notion.

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Sean Boyle, a really smart Publicis brand planner, once told me good brand strategies offer a poetic appeal. To understand his point, I suspect it is much easier to look at a brand strategy and notice a lack of poetry than is to articulate  a poetic frame.  I’ve tried poetry. When my pops died, I wrote one. Following powerful relationships, others. They weren’t “There once was a man from Nantucket” ditties, they were home-grown and from the heart. Without rhyme or perfect tempo.  They were my tempo.    

Poetry and what is poetic is in the eyes of the beholder I reckon, so Sean’s notion about good strategy will be different to each planner. But let’s agree to say poetic ideas are pregnant ideas. And dimensional. Ideas that strike up emotion. Certainly they can provide rational context — it is the real world after all. Perhaps this is why “storytelling” is such a pop marketing topic of the day. But storytelling and the journey and all that other brand-speak, is only as good at the strategy that gave it birth. Only as good as the morals of those stories.  “A closer shave” is not poetic, “a softer rough” just might be. Peace.    

Second Screen Twitch.

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The second screen is a fundie of Twitch Point Planning and driver of moving a consumer closer to a sale. The ability to stall or hold the first screen, while pursuing the second, is part of Twitch Point Planning’s “understand” modus. So if one is reading a Kindle and twitches to a Mac or PC for a deeper dive into a topic, that person will likely return to the Kindle after sating their curiosity. Expected behavior. But marketers want a twitch or twitches to end in a purchase or transaction (read: sale, appointment, sign-up), not a quick return to the first screen. 

Sometimes a twitch might not be to another device, it might result in a car or bike ride to the store.  “Damn, I’m going to buy Europe ’72, by the Dead or a Cuban sandwich at Lenny’s.” But for the most part, the richest non-retail selling that will occur will happen on a company website. The last mile, as it were. The product or service website should provide a contextual, informational, aspirational multimedia expression of a product’s use and value. This is less likely to happen on a smartie than a tablet or computer.

As a rule (and rules have many exceptions) a good twitch point plan seeks to close that first screen and commit to the second. Or third. Bookmarking or Digging a site, while watching TV is not as good as clicking on the shopping cart.

It’s all about the pathways and how one uses them. Peace.   

My first paid insight.

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As a young account supervisor at McCann Erickson working on the AT&T private data line business, I visited a tradeshow called InterOp.  In the land of B2B, trade shows are a great place to learn what’s up? They still are, to a degree, for tasting, touching and gauging the veracity of people with whom you’re speaking.  But the web has taken a little wind out of trade show sails.

At InterOp in the 90s, I trod the show floor asking lots of questions, meeting AT&T product people, competitors, chatting up salespeople and visiting presentations. When I returned home I had to do a write-up on what I learned.  The paper was my first real “good doggy.”  It contained an insight about InterOp that had to do with name badges. Every third badge said “consultant.”

At the time data interoperability was such a mess (think the opposite of open systems) that the business was in crazy turmoil. There was no leadership or firm technology consensus.  So many geekuses were making a living solving individual problems, on an island kind of problems, and demand for consulting was great. It was getting messier and messier.

AT&T knew near term that if they fed the mess they would make some nice money. But if they solved the mess, they would make even more money. “Reducing the complexity” was a brand strategy that resonated in the market.  So, you don’t always get your insights by talking to people; sometimes they can be found in the strangest places. “Hey, eyes up here.” JKJK.

Peace.

 

Percent of GDP Spent on Brand Planning.

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I am on a quest to figure out what part of the US GDP is spent on marketing. The current US GDP according to the World Bank website is $15.6 trillion. Healthcare in America is estimated to be about 18% of the GDP and my gut is telling me dollars spent on market are probably in the same ballpark.

GDP is defined as the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products” so one might say since marketing comprise all four Ps, product being one, that all of GDP is marketing, but let’s use What’s the Idea? math and remove the cost of producing goods from the equation.

So what are we counting? Research and development of new products. Headcount of people in all marketing services; within the company and vendor.  All out of pocket for advertising, promotion, PR, research, sales, channel, web and service. Based on my seriously fuzzy math, let’s say we are spending $2.8 trillion in marketing sans production.  That’s some cheddar.

Of that amount, what percent do you think is spent creating an organizing principle that guides marketing? That allows employees and consumers to learn the unique value of a brand…and articulate it with meaningful language. Not taglines like “Chase what matters.”

The answer is not much. 

Were we to take all the revenue of companies like Interbrand, Landor, Brand Union and Siegel+Gale and brand planning practices at agencies, we would find that it amounts to a milli-portion of the total. So we’re building brand with lots of people, lots of tools, lots of services and very, very little strategy. I’m having a brain freeze and not even eating ice cream. Peace.

PS.  Getting to actual spending numbers would be a great econometric project for a business school student. 

 

NSA meets Verizon meets Nielsen.

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I’ve been thinking about a friend who has a clothing line catering to female teens and tweens in a particular sports category. A rich one. A co-worker earlier this year mentioned she spent more the $100,000 on this sports pursuit over the course of the child’s school years.

Knowing what I do about this target and its proclivity for texting — between competitions they sit in gymnasium halls and stare at their phones – there is huge opportunity to find “Posters.” Posters are original content creators, Pasters are their minions.

Were we to go all NSA and look at their (mom’s) cell phone bills, would be we able to tell Posters from Pasters? I’m not sure. Were we to go all Verizon on the bill maybe. Perhaps Verizon can figure out a “forwarded message” from an original picture or video post. Certainly the bills can indicates which kids are moving more media – more digits.

Then we need a Nielsen lens to look through so we can see how these young Poster ladies cluster. So  we can find what other media and products they consume and what behaviors they share. (Like listening to iPods while mom drives them to competitions. Hee hee.)

Once we cull the Posters from the Pasters we’re home free. Because, frankly, much of what they are sending across the ether is kids stuff. With a content marketing plan using a social twist, driven by a tight brand plan, we can fertilize this garden already poised to grow and grow. Peace!

History…from the future.

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The problem with history is it’s being made now.  And because it is happening now, no one sees it as historic. The heinous crimes going on today in the Central African Republic are historic. It is Rwanda of 9 years ago, but because it’s happening now, they are seen as a horrid day on the news cycle — not viewed with the context it will be.

Brand Planners need to think historically. Historically, from the future. I like to think that great leaders, the ones about whom biographies are written, have an expanded, longer term view of things. They can remove themselves from the here and now and see bigger pictures…see today within larger context.

Brand planners approach their work this way. They are not pipe smoking academics – heads in cloud – they are charged with seeing beyond the dashboard, beyond the metrics of the day (though certainly guided and informed by them). Only then can they guide the now and the mission. Results today sans mission are serendipity. And brand false. (I loved Barry Diller’s recent quote to Tina Brown, “Enough about traffic.”)

Brand plans grow, mature and adapt. Like children, they are fortified by family and environment. Great plans without great products are few and far between, but not unheard of. (Know of any? Feel free to share.)

Now, wash your hands and go make some history. Peace!

 

Pinterest vs. the Lazy Website.

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I’m not a pinner or user of Pinterest (yet), but recently visited the site in an effort to help out a friend with a woodworking business; my intent was to get him to display his amazing work.  Pinterst recognized the fact that I was not an active user and so popped up a quickie tour of new features.  The pop up made it sound as if they were sharing new enhancements, but it could easily have just been their way of reorienting and activating me.

Nice finesse Pinterest.  This is how the web should work.  In my world, where a website should represent the brand plan (one claim, three proof planks), pop-ups or interstitial pages that vary based upon your visiting behavior are refreshing. A return visitor that always heads straight to contacts or about should be offered a quick link there. A first time or lapsed user should be treated with special gloves. A repeat purchaser should get the special treatment — perhaps a surprise every now and again, and other delights.

But this doesn’t happen very often.

We have really kind of forgotten the website these past few years as we go all head down on shiny new social media and moble. And now “content marketing” is the haps. Often unbridled content marketing. Off-piste content marketing.  (That’s why it’s smart to use thought leaders in the practice – see Kyle Monson and www.Knock2x.com for instance.)

Fred Wilson and John Battelle in a recent video chafed at the notion of giving traffic to other’s websites.  I agree. Social and content are kind of like chumming and fishing, but once the fish is on the line it needs to come into the boat.

Websites are the biggest most important development in commerce since the telephone.  Let’s get back to optimizing them. Steve Rubel, you with me on this? Peace.

Jeremy spoke in class today.

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Last year I worked with an interesting K12 educational development company called Teq. For a brand planner it provided a perfect storm of stimulating elements: a business with a changing model, tons of humanity (tools to teach children), inner city color, political sturm und drang, and pent-up market demand. Oh, and the market could be measured in billions not millions. In addition to developing a brand plan and marketing communications plan I had my eye on creating a social media dept. – something I’ve long blogged about.

Before I landed at Teq I found a dude on the company site named Jeremy Stiffler. He was one of the reasons I really liked the Teq, site unseen. Every company needs a Jeremy Stiffler.  He was a SME (subject matter expert), who without breaking a sweat could be recorded on video and teach the products and services.  Part actor, part teacher, part digital usability savant, Jeremy could look the camera in the eye and walk you through a product or topic tutorial (tute) with flawless effectiveness. Good teachers know when a student doesn’t get something by looking at their expression. Jeremy, intuitively knew it, even from behind the camera.

Social media departments need a good writer, videographer, editor and still photographer.  Obviously, they all need to be orchestrated at the hands of a brand manager and plan.  But the best departments in their respective business will always have a full or part time Jeremy.  Not a pretty on-camera face or rented talent, an illuminating teaching presence who works for the company and gets people. Peace.