Apr 12, 2013 | Branding, Marketing
Like is too easy, no emotional investment has been made, to do anything useful, you need to move to want. As noted in a previous post, social media wombats, those clicking a “like” button on your site in the hope that you will “like” them back, are breeding at exponential rates.
Nobody ever engaged with a proposition, or bought anything, because they “like” it. People become engaged with an idea, a brand, make a purchase decision, because they want to.
Nobody ever got marries because the “like” their potential partner, they do it for much deeper reasons, they “want” to.
Apr 9, 2013 | Branding, Marketing
It seems that there are a lot of hashtags appearing on ads in traditional media, and I wonder at their value.
Some conversations are simply not worth having, and so inviting one by using a twitter hashtag is absorbing some of your hard earned brand credibility, for no return.
Building a brand is still a difficult, long term, brick by brick effort, and wasting some of that effort by following the lastest fad pushed by a 20 year old with a beanie seems futile.
Even in the “old days” when you could block the few broadcast channels with advertising, it was still consumer by consumer, it is just that we could not see the process, as advertising, particularly mass adverting is a one way, non accountable activity. However, consumer by consumer, user by user, you still had to touch them in some way to motivate a modification to their behavior over time. If successful, your consumer built a relationship with your brand, if not, well, the failure on an individual consumer level was largely invisible. Apart from a very few individual cases, such as market research, a complaint, return, or conversation at point of purchase, the possibility of individual contact was very limited.
No longer. Now, we have the potential to see the whole process unfold from initial display of interest, to purchase, and post purchase behavior, if we are smart enough, and game enough, to put in the tracking mechanisms. These mechanisms make marketing investments accountable! Imagine, the end of the waffle!
Just putting a hashtag on the end of an ad, and hoping for the beginning of a worthwhile relationship is likely to be completely unsuccessful, and probably counter-productive, consumers are way too smart, and advertising savvy to be herded like the sheep of old.
Apr 7, 2013 | Branding, Communication
Interesting verb, “to brand”.
On one hand, it can mean sticking a mark on something you own to indelibly claim ownership.
On the other, it implies a process of building a relationship with something that provides you with some sort of satisfaction and gratification that you value.
These two things are at opposite ends of the same stick. No sensible marketer believes any longer that they “own” a customer, although that argument is pretty common amongst corporations that have several divisions all servicing the same client.
An then you get something like this terrific Somerset Cider ‘Apple” advertising, It is a parody, it trades off the engagement people have with “Apple”, and I wonder if it adds to the Apple brand, rather than just taking an opportunistic, and parasitic position.
I suspect, it adds to the mystic of the “Apple” brand, as it is entertaining, interesting, feeds into the Apple target market and psychology, and holds Apple up as a “gold standard”, so Apple should be thanking the Somerset cider people.
However, I bet the litigious bunch in Cupertino are tearing their hair out, and my guess is that we have not heard the last of it.
Apr 5, 2013 | Branding, Communication
When you have something to communicate, do it simply, decisively, without any ambiguity or extra frills, and look the receiver of the communication in the eyes. This holds for personal communication, advertising, and now for the myriad of social communication sites that have burst onto the communication landscape.
This commercial, from back in the 60’s, by the now long gone Union Carbide advertising their insulation must be one of the greatest commercials ever. I saw it as a kid on our first TV, and have never forgotten the message. It talks about the product, demonstrates the benefit, is a simple idea easily communicated, you watch and remember all the commercial, not go to make a coffee.
The communication landscape may be radically altered from when I was a kid in the 60’s, but the skills of effective communication remain just the same, just as human. However, the production values have gone up a bit, we could now shoot a better looking commercial on our mobile phones, but it is not the look, but the message that counts.
Apr 2, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
Are these two separate ideas, or just opposite ends of the same stick?
In a world increasingly driven by data, and as someone who has been known to rant about the necessity of measuring marketing efforts in order to build a better ROI on marketing investments, where does emotion fit in?
Data is a bit like the framework of a house, you can see where the bedrooms and bathrooms are, how big they are, are there any windows, and so on, but that is a sterile, emotionless representation of the home that framework can become. Add some colour, furnishings, a kids teddy on the floor, and the framework becomes a home. It is these additions, the accoutrements of life these added things that all have their own stories that adds the emotion to the framework of the house.
We are rushing headlong into a world run by data, but it would be a mistake to let the pendulum go too far, and overwhelm the emotion, as we live and remember with stories, and memories, data is just the means we use to make them more accessible.
As you contemplate the analytics on your web site, and the data in your CRM system, don’t forget that each data point represents a human story, experience, feeling, and some sort of emotion, and it will add great value when you are able to incorpoare that into he way the data set works.
Mar 27, 2013 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business, Social Media
Things move on petty quickly.
It is just a few years ago that even ordinary websites had a reasonable chance of being noticed, and communicate something worthwhile. Not now, a site that just offers static information is as relevant as last weeks chip wrapper.
“Content” suddenly became the next big thing, useful information in graphic and video formats, links to other sites, and research reports to the wazoo, all offered in the interests of “engagement” of the reader. Still pretty useful, but the production of content has become so easy, that most of it around is just crap, and it takes effort to sort through it. Research comes from unknown, unqualified sources, video is largely of the result of a kid with a mobile, there is simply so much of it, that no longer does it easily fit the bill.
Social media of various types now fills the role of information, and engagement. Websites are rapidly becoming the business end of the sales process, and as such must be transactional, their relevance as purveyors of information, is rapidly eroding to that of relevance only in the sence of confirming terms of trade.
A website without a capacity to transact is like a fancy car without an engine, nice for enthusiasts to look at, but no good for getting the shopping.
