I always like entering the photography competition at the San Diego Fair. It forces me to sift through all the images I took over the year and pick my favorites. The competition also forces me to take the time to produce finished pieces.
This year I was awarded a first in Black and White Architecture and three honorable mentions.
If you want to see what I've been up to check out
http://www.hirezdigital.com
What I am about to write is predicated upon being able to back it up.
Where PR falls short and advertising excels in its ability to create reality. In PR your only power is to spin what is already present. In advertising and to a certain extent marketing you have the power to create your own reality and then to deliver upon it.
Outsourcing can be a valuable tool that allows smaller companies to take on jobs that are either too large for them to handle internally or may lie outside their area of expertise. However, companies incur hidden costs when they use outsourcing as a means of augmenting functions that are already handled internally.
Being part of a start up affords me the opportunity to be involved in aspects of the business that I would not otherwise have access to if I were siloed away in the marketing department of a large corporation. Outsourcing is a slippery slope. It might start with jobs that are beyond the capabilities of the firm, but transition into jobs that could be handled more efficiently somewhere else. It is here that the hidden costs become most apparent.
There are tangible costs
There are also intangible costs
It is impossible to directly compare the costs of an outsourced job with an internal job on a per hour basis. For example, it is incorrect to assume that a job outsourced at $45 per hour is cheaper than one that would cost $90 per hour internally. First, there is the cost of the equipment that lies dormant because the job is outsourced. Second, there is the cost of labor. Third, there is the intangible costs. These three costs must be added to any outsourced dollar figure.
Once these costs are weighed in most companies will find that it is either best to keep a job completely internal or the job must be completely outsourced.
In the words of the venerable Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid, ""Man walk on road. Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk down middle, sooner or later, get squished just like grape."
This statement might sound cold and calculated, but I'll say it anyway. If you want to get promoted within a large corporation, the last thing you want to do is get so good at your job that the higher ups believe no one else can do it. As marketers rise through the ranks, they need to show proficiency in all aspects of marketing. They need to show that they are awesome generalists not specialists.
The age old saying is that a specialist knows more and more about less and less until eventually they know absolutely everything about nothing. On the other hand a generalist knows less and less about more and more until eventually they know nothing about everything. The ideal is to err on the side of the generalist. A chief Marketing Officer needs to know a little about everything in all levels of the organization.
So, back to getting promoted - Say you are an SEO Marketing Manager and you have a goal of being VP of Marketing for the organization. During your routine review do not focus on all of your SEO accomplishments. Don't get me wrong. You need to show you are kicking ass in your position, but do not dwell on it. Instead try to show how your accomplishments relate to other functions in the department.
When talking to superiors within the marketing department keep the conversation high level. Talk about marketing issues outside of SEO or explain how these issues relate. Likewise, when talking to superiors from other departments try to show your cross-functional knowledge.
If you do so, you will show that you are able to operate on a high level. If you don't, you will be pigeonholed as a SEO Geek and your only promotional opportunity will be to eventual become Director of SEO Marketing. A powerless title whose only dominion is very land you were trying to escape.
They say sales people are the easiest to sell to and by extension marketers are easy to sell to as well. Let's face it, we appreciate a good pitch and reward it.
My wife can testify to this. I can be sold on anything. Heck, if the price and pitch were right, I'd buy the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm a sucker.
That brings me to today. For the first time since the 49, 59, 69 cent menu, I ate at Taco Bell. One of my colleagues was going there, I was hungry and I had a hankering for something. What might you ask? Crunch Wraps of course. Why? Because they are "Good to Go."
Thankfully, my pocketbook only allows me to indulge Taco Bell's Pitchman. Otherwise, I would have to go out and buy a Saab. Why? Because they are born from jets. Up until recently, I never realized that I always wanted a car that was "Born from Jets." Now, when I accelerate on the freeway, I look down at my Honda's speedometer and think, "Poor car. You were not born from jets."
I have to admit that I am still recovering from the Internet bubble years of the 1990's. I admit it. I was an addict. I played the game whole hog from naked calls on CMGI to founding Internet companies in my spare time.
In 2001, I went into rehab, otherwise known as an MBA program. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Having only a philosophy degree, I needed formal business training to cure me of my Internet wanderlust.
Two years of formal education inculcated upon me the need to found any new venture on a sound revenue stream. At the beginning of 2006 this basic revenue tenet seemed obvious. However, now I am not so sure.
This whole Web 2.0 phenomena has got me wondering. People who appear brighter, smarter, and more insightful than I could ever hope to be are founding companies left and right in order to gain eyeballs and an unpaid user base. Hardly any of these companies has a definable revenue stream.
I had a conversation with a CEO of one of these companies the other day. I'm not going to mention the company or the CEO, but you could probably guess. Anyway, this fellow wanted ideas on how to market his company. My response was that the marketing should be targeted to the people who will ultimately be paying the bills. I agreed that eyeballs were good, but pressed him about who were actually his customers.
His reply, "And … on our business model: we don't know how we'll ultimately make money. So think of how you would grow a strong and robust userbase without the constraints of revenue."
Sounds a lot like 1999 to me. As a simpleton, I tend to think that history is about to repeat itself and most Web 2.0 based companies will not be around in a few years.
If I were more insightful, I might be able to grasp the fact that it is different this time. Now eyeballs count. In 2006 we have a completely different type of Internet user than we did back in 1999.
Once an addict always an addict. I'm ready to party like it's 1999 again. I'm off to cultivate a user-base that will hopefully be bought by Google or Yahoo in a year for a couple of billion dollars.
These television commercials are hilarious. They were produced to conteract Al Gore's new movie on Green Gasses. Their premise is that Green House Gasses are good for the environment and natural. My choose your own titles are a bit facitous but I have not seen this level of spin since cigarette ads were banned from TV. Below is an article from the Enviance blog which links to these awesomely spun ads.
Clash of the Climate Change Titans Big oil companies lash out at Al Gore’s upcoming Climate Change movie with their own flavor of advertisements
You
know, this blog has been full of serious issues pertaining to the
environment including compliance, climate change, trends, and ways in
which people have improved the earth.
But now it’s time for some humor. Take a break from your daily grind and enjoy these 2 ad campaigns below – you are in for a treat!/p>
Yesterday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) – an organization funded by ExxonMobil and other big oil companies – launched two advertisements in response to Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth due out on May 24.
No, the ads are NOT an SNL skit. Repeat: NOT a skit. You’ll think twice after watching them, though. I expected the actor in the ads to suddenly break character and scream, “Live from New York – It’s Saturday Night!”. Yes, the ads are that funny and that unbelievable. Of course the blogosphere had a field day with them.
I agree with Think Progress and their assessment of the ads - that it’s comforting to know this is the best smear campaign on global warming rejectionists can come up with. Read Think Progress's summary of the ads and how they uncover the flaws in the ads’ logic (or lack thereof).
And most recently, read Grist's commentary about these ads and the shame factor.
Oh, you gotta love being in the environmental business!
by
Erin Swanson
Take a look a the following statistics courtesy of the Environmental News Network
Any shoe, any color at the touch of a keyboard. I remember the days when shopping was about discovery. I would have a mental image of the product I wanted and would then scour the mall to find the perfect match. Today, companies like Nike have put the power of design in the hands of the customer. Now if you want a black Nike Shox Bomber with a safety orange swoosh, green pin striping, and red shox you no longer have to wait around for Nike to come up with this daring combination. All you have to do is go to their website, customize the shoe, and send it off to be manufactured.
Why talk about about this? A few days ago Jennifer Rice of Mantra Consulting rekindled a discussion in her blog on Co-Creation. This article, combined with Martin Lindstrom's analysis of Brand evolution got me thinking about why Co-Creation is such a powerful concept.
First, let me recap what Jennifer Rice and Martin Lindstrom have to say.
Jennifer writes,
There are different levels of co-creation; how far you take it depends on your product and industry. Here are a few terrific examples of deep co-creation:
1. Open-source software. No explanation needed.
2. Google's new API for on-line ads. An article in eWeek reports:
"There are a lot of things Google hasn't thought of that people could do with their ad campaigns," said Nelson Minar, a Google software engineer. "One of goals is to enable advertisers and third parties to create tools for their own purposes."
3. Lego's Lego Factory, where kids design new Lego models using a Digital Designer and submit them to competitions. This is a primary source of ideas for new Lego products.
In each of these cases, no one made assumptions about what customers wanted. Customers were brought directly into the process. In shallower levels of co-creation, customers aren't directly involved in designing products... but companies still seek to understand customers' mindsets, desires and unmet needs.
Martin Lindstrom identifies what Jennifer Rice calls Co-Creation as one of the current states of branding on an evolutionary scale.
MSP - Me Selling Proposition - Recently interactivity and technological innovation "have seen consumers taking ownership of the brands... Nike and Levi's websites offer to customize any of their models exactly to your need and size."
Why is co-creation such a powerful tool? I'll provide my top three reasons.
Thinking about going forward with a new keyword campaign?
Before you do, take note of a few sobering statistics courtesy of a debate recently aired on CNBC.
Interested in learning more? Here are some sources:
The problem critics have with click fraud is that it since it accounts for such a large percentage of on-line ad revenue, there is little or no incentive for company's like Google or Yahoo to put an end to it. Critics demand that a legal entity should force Yahoo and Google to regulate this matter. I disagree.
While I agree that Click Fraud should be looked at and not be allowed to run rampant, I do not see the dire need to force regulation. I believe in efficient market theory. Click fraud is analogous to the old Pay Per View banner ads of the late nineties. Pay per view Banner Ads used to be very expensive. Now they cost very little. Advertisers realized that a random banner ad generated very little ROI. The same will be true for search sensitive keywords. As soon as advertisers stop realizing a positive ROI on their keywords, they will pay less for them.
Right now the the average keyword search term cost $4.75. Is the price too high? Maybe so, maybe not. Advertisizer's revenue will determine whether or not it is too high. Nobody is forcing advertsers to pay $4.75. As soon Click Fraud begins to take a tangible bite out of revenue, then the price of the search term will go down. On the other hand, if an advertiser is making a great deal of money on those keywords so as to offset the 12% fraud rate, then that advertiser will view the fraud as the price of doing business and continue to bid up the keyword.
The efficient market theory rules Google and Yahoo as well. As soon as Click Fraud takes a bite out of their revenue they will regulate it. Google stands to achieve a huge competitive advantage if they can prove that their keywords have a significantly less fraud rate than their competitors.
Last night, during dinner, I had a heated debate about customer-centric marketing. I steadfastly maintained that you have to trust your customers, allow them into your marketing program and allow them to create your brand message.
The other person did not disagree, but thought too much emphasis was placed on the customer and you have to allow everyone into the marketing department such as value added resellers, prospects, and consultants in order to get a complete picture.
Midway through the conversation, It occurred to me that our contention was a matter of semantics. For the other person, the customer is a person who has purchased your product. Strictly this is true. The definition comes from sales. ie Leads, prospects, customers, etc.
I, however, take a more holistic view of the customer.
For me, the customer is anyone who is not currently employed by the company who may or may not add revenue to the company through a future or past sale. In short, it is everyone not on the company's payroll. Yes, there are different classes of customers, but it is wrong not to include people such as value added resellers (VARs) and non-users in the equation. VARs have a direct impact on a company's bottom line. They had to be sold on the idea of becoming a VAR. People who have chosen not to use your product or service should be put into the same class as customers. At one time this person was a prospect. A company stands to learn more from a someone who consciously chose not to make the purchase. Even if that person choose the competitor because the sales person was charismatic, he will defend his purchase with tangible reasons why he did not go with you. Likewise, your clients will often times have more to say about why they did not choose the competition than why they chose you.
If you want to take my holistic customer base definition to its logical demise, you might ask, "what about the grandma from Nebraska? How can she better help me market my new nanotech solution to life science companies?"
My answer would be that for any holistic class you have members of varying degrees. If you had all the money and time in the world, then go ahead and talk with the grandma in Nebraska. She might provide fresh insight. However, if your time and money is limited, then you are better off starting in the sweet spot with people your company has existing relationships with and then slowly radiate out.
Aside from finding the Ex-Spot, what can the company do? How about making a kick-ass product?
The brand builder Blog brings up this this point
For all this talk of WOM, WOMM, Marketing 2.0, consumer-generated content, co-creation, customer experience design, and everything else that we've been discussing here and on Corante, why don't we take a quick break and consider that:
- Positive WOM is simply the result of your company doing things right.
The current marketing tool du jour is word of mouth advertising, or as Pete Blackshaw calls it Consumer Generated Media (CGM). Companies long for it, bloggers write about it, marketers talk about it, and a few lucky authors have even gotten rich writing about it. However, no one has discovered a fail-safe formula for creating a successful word of mouth campaign.
While far from fail-safe, Pete Blackshaw offers his 2 cents on how to boost your chances in an article he wrote for ClickZ. The article revolves around two CGM campaigns, a successful one by Pete's Coffee and Tea and a disastrous one by GM. You can read the details here.
In the article , Pete identifies the ex-spot. He writes,
The ex-spot is that critical moment of experience that makes feedback and word of mouth slide off your tongue like kids on a waterslide. It is always well-timed; piggybacks on the great things we love about products, services, and brands; and is never -- I repeat, never -- forced.
A big reason so many marketers fail in word-of-mouth marketing programs is they embark on programs well outside the ex-spot. They push messages that are out of context with the actual customer or brand experience.
Pete suggests four factors that help a word of mouth campaign to be successful
- In store: Plenty of great experiences are nurtured at either the retail location or the point of purchase. Imagine the number of shoppers at Target who would jump at the opportunity to advertise for the brand while actually shopping.
- At the feedback moment: It's pretty clear consumer affairs is already an ex-spot for negative advertising, but there's a huge, untapped opportunity to turn it into a more proactive advertising engine for positive testimonials or incremental behavior. There's clear evidence the folks who give direct feedback also sing loudly on blogs and message boards. Media planers rarely touch this zone, almost as if consumers with megaphones have nothing to do with brand building.
- On the Web site: Web sites are increasingly an extension of brand experience, even in ostensibly low-involvement categories like consumer packaged goods. Whether through feedback forms, surveys, or well-placed programs, the ex-spot can be readily teed up via Web sites.
- In search: Certain keywords provide clarity as to what's on consumers' minds or whether they're actual users of the products. These are also good times to tee up such opportunities to create favorable CGM. What's important is the brand use the target-ability of search to get consumers quickly to the ex-spot.
The bottom line is that the stars have to be in alignment for CGM to work. Call it an ex-spot if you want, but for CGM to work the customer has to be in the correct state of mind for it to happen. Once again a common theme arises. The customer is the one in control.
Today, most people view freedom as an external event. Take a look at the dictionary definitions. They are all external:
For Jean-Paul Sartre, freedom is internal. Freedom is the ability to define your thought. The world outside of your mind exists as it is. Your freedom lies in your ability to define how you perceive it.
One of my favorite parts of Being and Nothingness was when Sartre explained exactly what freedom is. Sartre tells a story of a time he went hiking up a mountain. Half way up the mountain he developed terrible blisters on his feet. It was at this point that freedom was defined. Sartre was no longer in control of the fact that he had blisters. However, he was free to define those blisters in relation to his being.
On one hand, Sartre could view the blisters as the final disabling factor that stopped a hike that was doomed from the start. On the other hand, he could view the blisters as a sign he was achieving his goal. The blisters could be a source of motivation bringing him closer to the summit.
How does this relate to marketing and branding?
A company has very little control as to how a person perceives and defines its product. A company can persuade its customers to perceive it in a certain way. It can put all the pieces on the table for a customer to have a positive experience. Ultimately, however, it is up to each customer to define the experience.
For a marketer, freedom is awesome. Just think what would happen if it was possible for company's to control the way its customers perceived its products. Once control was obtained there would be total domination. It would be impossible to up-seat a customer from your competitor. It is because of this innate freedom that marketers have jobs and that it is possible for a company to gain market share.
For a Brand Director, freedom can be terrible because it is impossible to tell with certainty if a brand identity program will be successful or not. The problem is that too many companies define their brand message in an ivory tower. They formulate a positioning statement and then try to impress it upon their audience. Sometimes it resonates; other times it does not. When it resonates management is applauded for their ability to touch the consumer. When it fails, management is replaced.
To those in the brand department, take heart. Freedom does not have to be feared. In fact, it should be embraced. Make the customer part of your brand identity program. Listen to what your customers are saying about your product and service. Make them part of your team.
Back in the early 90s, I was the manager of a wine store in San Francisco. At the time, we knew next to nothing about branding, yet instinctively everyone in the store was aware of the power of smell. We had concrete floors. Inevitably, a bottle of wine would break every now and then. After a while, we began to notice that the scent of wine caused sales to increase. It actually became a running joke. Whenever we had a store full of people browsing and not buying we would joke with one another that someone should break a bottle of wine.
Why tell this story?
I've been making my way through Martin Lindstrom's new book , Brand Sense. In a nutshell, Martin argues that companies should use sensory stimuli to better build their brands. A few facts on page 97 and 98 caught my attention
Another experiment was conducted in Harrah's, a casino in Las Vegas. One area was set aside and infused with a pleasant odor... Revenues from the scented area were 45 percent higher than those of the scentless counterparts.
A Disney World popcorn attendant... knows that when business is slow, all he has to do is turn on his artificial popcorn smell...
Woolworth's in Britain... introduced the smell of mulled wine and Christmas dinner
Victoria's Secret has their own blend of potpourri.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece called Combine and Surrender expousing the need to combine your sales channels and surrender to your customers in order effectively market in today's atmosphere.
I want to thank the Modern Marketing Blog for cluing me in on a great interview with David Weinberger, author of, Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
Alistair Craven, from Management First, asked David,
David replied,
Most businesses still think they are the best source of information about their products. They still think that they can control their markets by controlling what information they release. So, they look to the Internet as a way of doing business as usual, albeit with bits instead of paper. That's why most corporate websites are boring, pointless and offensive.
Customers have figured out that other customers are the best sources of honest information about products. Networked markets know more than the companies they're talking about. That changes everything, but not enough companies have caught on.
The biggest organizational sin remains insisting that the organization remains in control. That control was always largely illusory. Now it gets in the way of the exponential increases in innovation and customer loyalty that occur when businesses have the guts to encourage customers and employees to find one another and talk freely.
Alistair went on to ask,
Giving up control.
We – your customers – are out meeting one another, talking up a storm, laughing, having a great time. This is not something marketers can control or even much influence. Coming into these conversations with the intent of moving them in a particular direction is worse than foolish. It's rude.
Although it might be impossible to clearly define the word, "Brand," it is possible to track the way companies have gone about trying to brand their products. In the first few pages of the book Brand Sense, Martin Lindstrom concisely tracks the evolution of branding in the 20th Century.
- USP - Unique Selling Proposition - In the 1950s the Unique Selling Proposition, "ensured that the physical product, rather than the brand was the core differential."
- ESP - Emotional Selling Proposition - In the 1960s "similar product were perceived as different primarily because of an emotional attachment. Think of Coke and Pepsi."
- OSP - Organizational Selling Proposition - In the 1980s "the organization or corporation behind the brand in fact became the brand." Nike is a good example.
- BSP - Brand Selling Proposition - In the 1990s "the brand was stronger than the physical dimensions of the product. think Harry Potter, Pokemon, Disney, or M&M's."
- MSP - Me Selling Proposition - Recently interactivity and technological innovation "have seen consumers taking ownership of the brands... Nike and Levi's websites offer to customize any of their models exactly to your need and size."
- HSP - Holistic Selling Proposition - For Martin Lindstrom this is the next branding permutation. Martin writes, "HSP brands are those that not only anchor themselves in tradition, but also adopt religious characteristics at the same time they leverage the concept of sensory branding as a holistic way of spreading the news. Indeed, Martin Lindstrom is not alone in predicting Holistic Branding. Patrick Hanlon outlines a similar theory in his book, Primal Branding.
Many words have been exchanged both in print and online trying to define the word "Brand." It has been defined as everything from a blueprint that a company uses, to a position in the mind of the customer. The first takes an internal view, while the later an external view.
I prefer to take an Eastern point of view, a brand is everything about the product and nothing at the same time. It is both internal and external. A logo is part of a brand, but a brand is not a logo. The company is a brand, but a brand cannot be completely defined by a company. The brand is the product, but stripped of its name association the product ceases to be a brand.
It helps me to think of a brand like a sub-atomic particle. A long time ago I read the book The Dancing Wu Li Masters.
Tenets from this book continue to direct my thought today. Once you pinpoint the brand as a snapshot in time, there are things you cannot know about it. A brand is a holistic, dynamic entity. Once a brand is disected and analyzed, the analyzed object ceases to mirror its current reality.
Jennifer writes about my Starbucks example,
I'm sorry Jennifer, but at a base level I do not see the difference between the Lego Factory which you offer as a valid example of co-creation and the Starbucks Experience which you claim to be merely customization. In your words customization is "allowing customers to combine pre-made elements into a product or service."
You say that for Starbucks to be a truly co-created experience it would have to allow customers to vote on the types of beans, flavors, store locations, etc. However, in the Lego Factory customers cannot design a new Lego brick. Customers must in your words, "combine pre-made elements into a product or service. It appears that the Lego factory is just customization of pre-defined ingredients just like Starbucks.
However, Lego is making strides towards Jennifer’s vision of co-creation. Up until a week ago customers could not even purchase the exact Lego's they needed. They were forced to buy pre-defined packages to assemble their designs. Now they are allow to buy only the bricks they need. If Starbuck's had allowed Lego's previous level "co-creation" a customer would have to buy the whole bottle of Vanilla Syrup if they wanted a Vanilla Latte.
My point is this - For me, it is impossible to draw the line between co-creation and customization. All co-creation involves customization of a previous set of elements. In Google’s API, one has to work with the tools that exist. In Starbucks, one has to work with the pre-defined beans, flavors etc. In the Lego factory, one is forced to use pre-defined Lego bricks.
For me, co-creation is directly correlated to customization. To the extent that the company and the customer share in the production, is the extent that it is co-created. If the customer were allowed complete freedom to design independently of the company, then is would no longer be co-creation but simply creation. For co-creation to exists there has to be some level of customization of pre-existing ideas, tools, etc., otherwise you just have creation.