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 10, 2013 | Change, Communication, Social Media
In the economy of C21, we are far less interested in physical stuff that we are in intangibles.
A measure that will emerge both as one of internal corporate performance, and the performance of markets is the velocity of ideas.
How quickly do the ideas being considered in the executive suite filter to the shop floor, and in what form are they perceived?
How quickly is an initiative taken up by others externally upon which depends the success of the initiative?
This morning I was at a meeting of small businesses, 700 of them, gathering to voice our dismay at the total disenfranchising of small businesses in our political process. Together we employ millions of Australians, are the biggest generator of economic activity, and we create, innovate, and drive the health of the economy, but are ignored.
Hopefully no longer.
By the end of the meeting, the “#toobigtoignore” handle on twitter had generated substantial traction, and the hits on the website www.toobigtoignore.org.au were starting. The velocity of the spread of the ideas expressed will be a key measure for the success of the initiative, and by watching the velocity of the ideas, and the depth of engagement of those reached, will be not just measures of success, but leading indicators of that success.
Ignore the notion of idea velocity at your peril.
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 4, 2013 | Marketing, Social Media
I have been intrigued by the differances in material delivered to my inbox, when compared to a colleagues inbox, using the same search terms.
Our lives are run by algorithms, every time we log on, our history, and assumptions based on that history, plays a determining role in what we see, the order in which we see it, and the offers that get delivered.
Given that Maths output is exact, black and white, it is the assumptions made based on the patterns of past behavior that create the differences in the content that individuals have delivered to them.
It proves again the old adage, “what you see is what you get”, albeit in an entirely different context.
