Relevant Engagement

Letting go of the eyeballs

Eyeballs is about as meaningful to marketers today as they are tasty.

CMO Simon Clift delivered a message at the Ad Age conference last week that resonated with me to the core of my genetic markup.

"Brands aren't simply brands anymore. They are the center of a maelstrom of social and political dialogue made possible by digital media," said Unilever Chief Marketing Officer Simon Clift, who warned that marketers who do not recognize that -- and adapt their marketing -- are in grave peril.  "No matter how big your advertising spending, small groups of consumers on a tiny budget might hijack the conversation," he said. "So this internet thing is much bigger and more interesting than just finding successors to TV advertising."

Reading excerpts from the conference it was clear that Mr. Clift is fully aware of the environment in the marketing world today and basically outlined a cautionary tale to those in the audience (and beyond) that are thinking and acting differently.  According to Ad Age, his address did much to define an internet-driven sea change that's put consumers in control and at times threatened to overwhelm marketers and their agencies, who -- despite frequent protestations to the contrary -- are still rather partial to the idea that they define their brands.

I can't believe this is still being discussed but it is.  In my youth I discussed this very issue when the whole Mento's/Dt. Coke viral video went wild.  Doesn't fit our brand personality. 

Again, reported by Ad Age, Mr. Clift added: "brands are now becoming conversation factors where academics, celebrities, experts and key opinion formers discuss functional, emotional and, more interestingly, social concerns," and "of course, the conversation is no longer one way or 30 seconds. ... You may want to talk about sport and just doing it, and the consumer raises the uncomfortable question of sweatshops."

Our industry has had a century of doing things a certain way so I understand the pain of changing, but the issue is, it is time to change or perish. 

I'm excited for my firm because our direction and intent is to help those interested in addressing the market issues head on and succeeding.  Those not interested in success need not contact me.

Are you intimate with 150 or more people?

I read a great descriptor the other day that I believe needs to be included in our standard marketing nomenclature moving forward.

Ambient Intimacy
"Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn't usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it possible." 

Leisa Reicheit

Leisa's quote can be found within a wonderful presentation provided by David Armano  The Micro-Sociology of Networks.

Basically none of us have time to be intimate with more than five or ten people.  That's just the way our society and culture is today.  However, technology is creating new cultural norms that create behaviors that expand beyond what we as marketers are experiencing for the very first time, e.g, Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, etc.

At the heart of this is the customer and today, the customer is in charge.  They always have been, but today, they have real teeth.  Before, we as marketers had the ability to construct messages and influence perceptions and clients could control their products in addition they felt like they had control of the message around their Brand.  That just isn't the case anymore.

Yesterday: "You can have any color car you want, as long as it's black"

Today: "You can have any color car you want."

I realize you've heard, read and been exposed to the "customer rules" posit ad-nauseum and I apologize for stating it again but it is true and needs to continue to be repeated. 

We live in a world of products/services that are commodities, everything is real-time, expectations of service are high and cost low.

The ability to contain the message is over.  You must find solutions that engage people and build trust. 

The Irrational Customer

What customer is rational?  I'm not suggesting that they are crazy but what I am suggesting is that rational thinking hardly ever is a step in how customers consider your brand.

If you are still approaching brand marketing by using traditional conventions you're using traditional conventions.  No, I didn't make a typo.  Traditional conventions in a world where "digital" causes changes in the marketplace every 90 days that influence customers rational and irrational process of brand engagement doesn't work anymore.

Recently Seth Godin posted a great note, The Rational Marketer (and Their Irrational Customer).

There are all types of tools and methodologies today that claim they can tap into the needs and concerns of customers.  If you've found a firm that can help you succeed, that's great!  If you haven't, our firm can certainly use our proven methodologies to provide a road map to successful engagements.  The tip of our spear is our BrandSmart (TM) program.  I'll discuss more in in future posts.

Recently Seth Godin posted a great note, The Rational Marketer (and Their Irrational Customer).

There are all types of tools and methodologies today that claim they can tap into the needs and concerns of customers.  If you've found a firm that can help you succeed, that's great!  If you haven't, our firm can certainly use our proven methodologies to provide a road map to successful engagements.  The tip of our spear is our BrandSmart (TM) program.  I'll discuss more in in future posts.

New Rules of Marketing (outlined by Unilever)

I have and will continue to call topics "New World Trends" because I believe it takes time for concepts to take hold and acknowledged as truths.

Recently Ad Age published the "New Rules" of marketing.  They were supported/endorsed/discussed in-depth by Unilever CMO Simon Clift recently.

Here they are for your consideration:

1. Listening to consumers is more important than talking at them. As Mr. Clift said, "We may be ahead of our competitors, but we're most definitely behind consumers." The consumer is not a moron, she's the person defining your brand.
   
2. You can't hide the corporation behind the brand anymore -- or even fully separate the two. Even this editor's creaking computer only took 0.13 seconds to show that Philip Morris is owned by Altria Group. Welcome to radical transparency, where bad corporate behavior will damage your brands, and vice versa.
   
3. PR is a primary concern for every CMO and brand manager. If "marketing" and "PR" are not the same department, tear down the wall. Spend time deciding whether PR is underleveraged in your organization.
   
4. Cause marketing isn't about philanthropy, it's about "enlightened self-interest," as Mr. Clift puts it. That doesn't mean it doesn't count. Don't be ashamed of your profit motive, because great branding and doing good are increasingly one and the same.
   
5. Social media is not a strategy. You need to understand it, and you'll need to deploy it as a tactic. But remember that the social graph just makes it even more important that you have a good product. Put another way: The volume and quality of your earned media will be directly proportional to the impact and quality of your product and ideas.

Ad Age: Unilever CMO Simon Clift: Author Jack Neff: Published April 13, 2009

You're not the boss of me

We've all been trained to think that we have control over our brand and our brand voice.  Yesterday, that may have been somewhat true.  Access to information and two way dialogues was limited in comparison to the present.  Today, in a networked society, the ability to have total control, to contain a message, is gone.

A quote by Peter Drucker, "Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality." creates a correlation that, to me, is a concept at the heart of what needs to be considered from here on out.

NWT: Nothing else constitutes quality but the perception of value in the customers mind and that perception cannot and will not be influenced by an advertisers efforts to control the message in a networked society.  Success comes through relationships and relevance.

LOOK OVER HERE......Hi, my name is results!

Before you start reading, I want to go on record and state, every channel has a place and a purpose, including television.  I'm an advocate of TV.  Who am I kidding, I'm a junkie.  I love it as a marketer and as a consumer.  That said, TV versus X, Y, Z. has got to stop.  We are wasting our time discussing a one "versus" the other.  No media channel has killed another channel (with the exception of the phone, it did pretty much decimate the telegraph).

Channel and content consumption are very complex discussions that require more time than one blog post. 

Today, the Center for Media Research and the Council for Research Excellence (CRE) released there findings on Video Consumer Mapping (VCM).  The title of the release, TV Still Occupies Two Thirds of Adult Screen Time. 

Three topics ran through my mind when reading the release study:

I. Kaizen

Marketing is about continuous improvement.  Solutions are no longer static activities that can be passively planned, placed, and reflected upon.  Everyone seems to be looking for "the algorithm" that taps into the consumers brain and rains money down on them.  Stop looking, doesn't exist.  The New World Trend is harsh: marketing folks can't phone it in anymore.  Commissions on media are gone.  Expected results are in.  We have to work for our money.

II.  Old News/Tired Thinking/Move On Please

For me this discussion is tired.  It reminds me of the Newspaper industry in the late 90's arguing about their dominance over the Internet (I could go on but I'm not into kicking and beating a field of dead horses).  The focus of discussion needs to shift from time spent to relevance of engagement.  Change is hard.  As I have previously discussed, in hard times and confronted with change, you cling to what you know.  The industry knows TV.  Case in point: Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research for Ball State's CMD, observes that "What differentiates this study... (is that) it's not a study about TV or the Web or any other medium... it's about how, where, how often and for how long consumers are exposed to all media... the observational method is the only real way to achieve accurate and reliable results."  One question Mr. Bloxham: Why does the findings and the article start out by saying "TV still occupies two thirds of adult screen time...." if the study wasn't about TV?

III.  Focus On The Gold

It's time to get off of thinking about Awareness only and only through the channel of Television.  I don't even know what that means anymore.  I have a flat screen portal on my wall that delivers video for Networks, but it also delivers telephony and Internet, I have a laptop (I work on it, I watch TV and I listen to iTunes), Pandora (is that radio), I have an iPhone (at night I watch TV on it so as to not disturb my wife).  FOCUS has huge implications for all primarily around the "Awareness" measurement and phase of the customer life-cycle.  Awareness was ad agencies and content producer's bread and butter for over 100 years.  That has changed and the large players are clinging on for dear life.  To grow, you have to let go.  If you're not changing, your dead.  Moving forward, the goal of a marketer or agency must be holistic solutions that create engagement, not just "got a problem? let's do TV." 

The following illustrates at a high-level the paradigm all markets face.  Money is generated on the back end of the life-cycle however most resources are focused on the front-end of the life-cycle and primarily one one channel - TV.   

As an ex media director I can here the debate now:

TV=Awareness=Eyeballs=Sales.  Consider the following equation and tell me if you still agree.

Marketing Budget: $1,000,000

Solution: Television

100,000 Adults 25-54 (Reached/Exposed), CPM $10, Customer Engagement & Impact: Unknown (Unless this was a completely pristine test where the advertiser has never run advertising).  If previous marketing efforts in a market and on the particular brand's product or service has been executed and someone wants to challenge my statement that you can definitively prove the impact give me a call I'd love to chat.  314-255-5333.

Solution: Social Media

78,600,000 Adults (Reached/Exposed), CPM $.013, Customer Engagement: 765,000, or fewer than 1%, visited an advertiser page on MySpace, though roughly half who did (358,000) visited the advertiser's website (there it is - those are the people that matter - they have a reason for engaging the brand - if the interaction creates a relevant engagement they will not only provide cash flow but they will be your best advertsing channel money can buy, Impact: Package-Goods Brand Earns $1.28 Million in Sales From $1 Million Social-Media Campaign

Do you still agree with only thinking about TV=Awareness=Eyeballs=Sales?

I realize this is one example and it is a bit extreme but hopefully you get my point.

There is also the debate about the halo effect of Awareness on Consideration/Preference, Conversion, and Retention/Loyalty.  I understand the argument and support to a point.  Greater attention to allocation strategies are absolutely necessary in order to provide a solution that generates better results for clients.

If anything the picture should look like more like this:

NWT

Scale and Understanding

I've often wondered why expansion of marketing efforts to include a digital element has been such a challenge over the past fifteen years.

I've come to a conclusion and have listed some of my thoughts below, this list is by no means exhaustive (and this is completely my opinion so I could be wrong).  My goal for this post is to share what I'm seeing/experiencing which in turns ignites a dialogue about how to resolve some of these challenges.

Scale and Understanding

Scale

1. The options are limitless
2. The knowledge to grasp the limitless options is not possible for any one person
3. The footprint and measurement activities of digital strategies (in comparison to traditional marketing efforts) feels small to most marketers.  There's the key: feels small.  Retail clients of mine have argued for years that they need "eyeballs."  I've counseled them to shift their focus away from an channel strategy that is basically one way and turn their attention to the smaller percent that has a much greater opportunity for their brand to create an emotional connection with the customer.  Time and again we were able to prove out this approach and just today findings were released by Ad Age provides a great case study of the ROI of Social Media on a consumer packaged good.

Understanding

1. In times of stress (and we are in a time of stress right now to be certain) people instinctively rely on what they know - typically authoritative marketing positions are still primarily occupied by people that don't or cannot grasp the concept and default to what they know.
2. There is still a reluctance by the majority of marketers to concede that their consumer plays a much larger role in actually defining their brand.  This is such a large paradigm shift some refuse to believe it exist.  I'm sad for these people.
3. Technically speaking, implementing digital initiatives are far more complex than most can even comprehend.  Needless to say, a Website is not PowerPoint.  Moving an image from one corner to another on a Website is not as simple as it is in PowerPoint..  In addition, the elements an agency must touch and guarantee a certain level of quality assurance is far greater than traditional channels.  Below is a crude visual of what I mean.

NWT: What is NWT?

NWT = New World Trend

As a point of reference throughout my postings I will refer to a topic within a post as what I'm defining as a New World Trend.

What is a New World Trend?  In my mind and experience the new world hit my reality back in 1997.  Like all things new, trends take some time to take hold.  The surprising thing to me is that this "trend" has taken more than 12 years.  Not that I'm anything special (because I'm not) but the obvious benefits to business were too hard for me to ignore and they are too hard for businesses to ignore today.

Thankfully, we seem to be coming over to the other side of this "trend" knowledge chasm. 

Be on the look out for the label NWT.

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple Silly (or Stupid if you want to be hard on yourself)

There are mountains of case studies demonstrating how successful brands take complex problems, reduce them to simple frameworks, ultimately creating solutions that range from simple to highly complex. 

"I'm confused, it's so complicated, things are moving too fast for me to focus, the economy stinks we need results now, we're retail we have to move fast (really, ask Circuit City how that's working for them), I have to respond as fast as the market....."  I agree, simplifying seems counter-intuitive, scary, foreign, and a lot of the times it's easier said than done.

To give yourself a fighting chance in this new world we've been blessed to be a part of, clients and the brands they represent shouldn't neglect a core tenet of brand engagement: don't forget to ask WWMCD (what would my customer do?).

Think about your own mindset when you are a customer.  What is your mental routine when engaging a brand?  How did you start your relationship with the brand and how/why do you continue to have a relationship after you've converted? 

REMEMBER: K.I.S.S.

1) Awareness, 2) Consideration/Preference, 3) Conversion, 4) Retention/Loyalty

These steps (or phases) go by many names: Customer Continuum, Customer Life-cycle, the Gravy Train, etc.....

?Question?  How often do you frame up your marketing efforts in those terms?  Be honest.....  I find clients run as quickly as possible to tactics as they can.  On the surface it's understandable.  They're concrete.  Tangible. 

A huge issue in our industry today - if you start your thinking tactically out of comfort and (possibly fear) you're headed for trouble and might as well be prepared to start over.  Time is one thing, but consider the financial investment - it could be substantial.

At a high-level I've outlined the customer continuum with definitions to help provide you with additional context:

1. Awareness = What is this brand/service and why should I care?
2. Consideration/Preference = The brand's product/service has made it past awareness, it means something to me, if I'm in the market to buy, why should I buy this brand's product/service
3. Conversion = I've made up my mind and I'm buying/In today's world, "buying" may not mean a cash transaction/Think of Conversion as remuneration - Conversion between a Brand and a Customer can take many forms of compensation (e.g., cash, personal insight, feedback, etc.)
4. Retention/Loyalty = I'm a client/Everything out there is a commodity, now's your chance to prove you were the right choice/Keep them coming back for more/Create a relationship that produces evangelic behavior

PONDER THIS: When you think globally of all the brand's out there your more than 99.99999% of them you have no awareness at all.  Think about the options customers have today and how important it is when you do have something to sell them.  You have to break through a massive amount of channels, noise and competition to get in your customers head.  Then you have to be deep enough for them to decide it's worth it to them to engage you. (NWT)

Think about that for a bit and let me know: do you start with the basics and kick ass or do you sometimes get high-jacked and get your ass kicked?

Process, Process, Process

A long time ago I ate lunch with a friend and we were debating the process of media planning (this was in 1992). At one point he said, "even with all of the process a lot of what we do is art." It made my stomach churn (it could have been the twelve chicken wings I just ate). At that time my naive view of the world was very black and white. It's been painful, but over the years I've learned that the world is gray.

When it comes to spending money I'll take science over art any day of the week. There are dozens of approaches to digital marketing (we'll review some later) but I've found that simple works really well especially when you're dealing with issues that can be very complex.

If you follow these five steps (for the most part) you'll do just fine.

1. Define: the first and most important step. Here you must assess the business, customer and technical requirements prior to any work beginning. (this is a critical step that companies want to skip for many reasons - I have yet to hear a reason that is justifiable - in a future post I will discuss the rule of 1:10:100.)
2. Design: during this step creation of the designs, content, features and functionality occur.
3. Develop: during this step the production and programming of the solution occur.
4. Deploy: here you start, launch, promote, and/or deliver your solution.

Success to this point can be measured three ways: was the work done on time, on budget and in scope. After this point there is usually little consideration but this is a critical next step.

1. Continuity: in the digital world, unless you plan to pull your solution quickly, you need to have a plan to feed and grow your solution or all of your efforts to this point will be wasted.

I once had a COO tell me, "you guys are speaking French and we need you to speak English." He was referring to a project that required the Account Executive to understand more about his client than they ever knew before. I said, "times have changed, it's time to learn French."