I’ve had some success and some failures in leadership.
Leadership opportunities come in many forms—from formal to informal. I’ve done both kinds and probably more of the latter.
I’ve also seen other leaders in action. Some great ones. Others less so. The great ones have something in common—they really step up when things are at their worst. This is a sign of true leadership. Actually it’s a great test to see who’s manager material vs. the stuff of leadership.
Some of the best managers know how to fly under the radar when times are tough. And I don’t blame them for it at all—leadership is meant for the few and even fewer excel at it.
It’s fun to watch leaders work when they are at ease but it’s educational to watch the really good ones go to work when they are under duress. They take it all on. The challenges, the responsibilities. The fire.
You’ve heard this before no doubt and it’s true. I’ve been reminded of this recently when...
-A senior executive of one of the world’s top tech companies agreed to take time with someone they’ve never met before whom I introduced out of the blue
-One of my mentors, now a wildly successful CEO took time to meet and encourage me
-I see so many people in my network doing making time for others when they are busy themselves
These are acts of Intelligent Generosity. Successful people are intelligently generous because they understand that life and business aren’t only about performance and professionalism but also relationships and relevance. And we’re only as relevant as the strength of our relationships.
This makes me think of a conversation I had with Rishad Tobaccowala not ago. You should see how he does this. He’s a master at it—generosity that is (amongst other things). When times are tough, it can be tempting to conserve energy, keep what you know to yourself and limit your exposure.
There is a time and place to say “no” (more on that later) But Successful people know how and when to give. They reach out, connect and share—knowing that positivity given is positivity received.
I’ve been called creative, been “a Creative” in my career and like to think I was born with an innate ability to create (we all were).
But In the business world, especially in marketing where I spend the majority of my days, creativity can be a tricky topic...
-Creative: You might not get paid professionally to be this but you probably already are, especially if you’ve ever solved a problem unconventionally or applied your imagination to accomplishing a task.
-A Creative: Your professional role in an organization or position of self-employment that pays you to apply a level of creative craftsmanship to produce professional-quality output in the form of created deliverables.
-Creativity: The fuel behind “being creative”. When creativity levels are high, we are most creative. When they are low, we are the least creative. When someone says “my creative juices are flowing” they have high levels of creativity.
When I work with “Creatives” I always strive to appreciate their craft and role and respect both. When I work with “everyone else”, I try to stimulate creative problem-solving potential. Being creative can be a full-time job, a quality or a state of being, but it’s also a part of being human.
I was recently prepping with the team for a client meeting...
We were doing the usual drill—moving slides around, clarifying roles and practicing our talking points for what we wanted to accentuate and where we hoped we could lead the meeting.
It’s all good practice. Meeting preparation that is. No matter how informal a meeting, one should be prepared and knowledgeable of the topics to be discussed.
However, more times than not, client meetings turn into jazzy jam sessions vs. a classical music concerto where the solo presenter performs for their captive audience.
Reading sheet music and reading the room doesn’t have to be at odds but put yourself in the shoes of a client on the other side of the table who is depending on you to help them do their job—do they need perfection or professionalism?
The two aren’t the same.
Being a professional in a meeting means knowing when to stick to your sheet music and when to riff, following the client’s lead. More times than not, meetings with clients both new and familiar should be more like improvised Jazz than perfectly performed classical.
The client isn’t your audience, but an integral part of the band.
I’ve been managing the mix between professional and personal before social networks became mainstream. Whenever I talk to someone who’s looking for advice in this area, I usually say something like…
See what Gary Vee does? Don’t do that.
Well, let me take a step back because there’s a huge caveat here. Gary’s got a near perfect professional/personal brand model if you’re one of the following:
- An entrepreneur/business owner -CEO -Full time digital influencer -Your only job is to be an Internet personality for your company
For everyone else—Specifically employees of companies who expect your focus to be on building value for the company NOT building your personal brand, you can follow something of the 80/20 or maybe 70/30 rule:
Bring some of your personality into what you do professionally and do it purposefully to build equity for both you and your company. It’s not easy and gone are the days of the traditional employee so some personal brand building is now expected by employers. But a good rule of thumb is that you should never shine brighter than your company and what benefits you should benefit them.
It’s not a perfect mix, but if it’s not your name on the check, it’s a decent guideline.
Once upon a time I was the youngest kid in the corporate conference room. I never thought twice before I spoke and digital jargon rolled effortlessly off my tongue. There was some good reason for this.
I had decent knowledge of HTML, taught myself Flash (some of you may need to look that up) and when digital media went social, I mastered that as well, at least in the early days. I can still remember the son of a local ad agency owner calling me “the digital guy”. These were heady pioneering years...
Now I’m often one of the older people in the corporate conference room and it’s striking how different my role is today. While there are times I’m vocal, there’s even more times I am actively listening so when I do speak, it’s informed and meaningful (or I hope it is).
Wisdom is earned through experience.
But outside the boardroom is where I’ve noticed the greatest change. Something happens as you advance in your career. That blind confidence is replaced with caution. You become quieter. In fields like marketing and tech, you wonder if your experience is as valued as youth. Going quiet is the last thing you should do at this point. My output is the best it’s ever been. It deserves a voice that goes with it. Not loud, but selectively impactful.
I started my career as a visual designer. For the first few working years of my professional life, my days were dominated by pictures over text. Over the years my skill set, tools, and approach to work evolved. Written communication helped manage team and client expectations.
Verbal communication was also useful, especially in situations where you find yourself going toe to toe with fellow A-type executives where a sharp mind and wise tongue are mandatory requirements. But recently, I was reminded of the power of making something real in order to make a point.
Instead of using words, I reached into my visual communications toolkit and mocked up what I was trying to say. If nothing else, it made it clear that this was something we needed to do for all of the ideas the team is debating.
More than ever, decision-makers need to see (and feel) something real before they make that final decision.
I still love words and verbal communication but sometimes it takes tangible visual communications to make something feel more real.
Several years ago, I shared a flight with a former colleague who was at a crossroads in his professional development. We had a spirited conversation about a number of things and I asked him what he wanted to do. He looked at me with a sense of clarity and said: “I want to do what you do”.
I paused for a moment, there’s always that micro decision to be made—do you speak the truth and try to be helpful or do you nod and smile? I turned to him and said as plainly as I could...
“I’m a strategist and I take complexity and simplify it, so it becomes actionable”
Then I said:
“I’ve seen you do the opposite. You make things complex and difficult to grasp”
I wasn’t sure how else to put it. After that, I encouraged him that if he wanted to do what I did, he would have to learn how to make complexity actionable. "Strategist" is a strange label. I’ve become used to the fact that it’s non-descriptive and vague and many strategists who have this in their title represent a wide spectrum of talent.
Strategy is a big tent. But as big as it is, any strategist despite their background should have the ability to immerse themselves in complexity and tame it to the point where it no longer induces paralysis.
The other day I ran into a former colleague who had gone on to take a senior role with a highly respected fortune 100 company you’ve definitely heard of. He’s kind of a big deal.
Yet after a few minutes of chit chat, he made it a point to go out of his way to express gratitude for learning the art of the Whiteboard...from me. And then I felt like kind of a big deal.
He knew what he was doing. Expressing gratitude to someone for something that they probably didn’t even know that they did is powerful stuff. And it’s rarely done.
So it’s something I’ll try to do more of myself. And then one day when I run into him again, I’ll let him know that I learned the art of expressing gratitude from his example.
Recently, I reached out to a colleague who had accepted an incredible new opportunity after many fruitful years with our company. We had never worked closely together but every brief interaction I had with her was positive and professional. And I watched from afar as she led her teams and regions to success.
Her response to my outreach was of course immediate. Great leaders have a way of doing this—even when they don't respond to every inquiry, they have a good sense of where their time and attention should and can go. So we chatted for a bit, and afterward, she shared with me one of her greatest moments of stepping up as a leader—a communication she had sent to her team, which really if you boiled it all down, championed what's known as "the golden rule" (do unto others).
Great leaders get that at the end of the day if we're all just a little more empathetic—if we all just appreciate where others are coming from a bit more, then the stage is set for better collaboration, behaviors and ultimately shared success. We follow leaders for these moments of simple clarity. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of what we know is true. Great leaders are great at reminding us of these things when we need them the most.
Last week I had the opportunity to both attend and participate at the Chief Digital Officer Forum in New York. If I had one macro take away from the conversations and topics covered—it was that a Digital Transformation Journey is an infinite loop. There is no destination. There is no summit to be reached. The more things change the more they look the same—and while this sounds simplistic in nature, it's actually the opposite because Digital Ecosystems have only become more complex over time and adoption has exponentially exploded with no signs of slowing down.
Disruption Happens One of my favorite speakers from the forum was Melinda Richter who heads up the Johnson and Johnson Innovation Labs (JLABS) function at the company. JLABS is a network of innovation Hubs across multiple geographies that focuses on bringing external innovators into the Johnson and Johnson fold providing a value exchange which offers some of the things a large organization can bring in exchange for the opportunity to learn from or potentially partner with innovators brought into the system. Without using the "D word" (Disruption) it became clear that JLABS was focused on ensuring that the broader organization could future proof itself but needed an operations system to do so.
Melinda's philosophy in dealing with internal stakeholders who grappled with the value of her initiatives is to probe whenever she got a "no" response. "Tell me more about your no" she explained is one of the ways she uses to get deeper insights into what drives resistance to change. She also advocated a three pronged approach to navigating change in a complex organization:
Championship (Find and leverage executive sponsors) Grit (The most valuable soft skill) Never Give Up (Change is hard)
Digital Transformation is a Journey: It Never Ends
The panel I facilitated included one of Edelman's clients in the food sector—Barilla. The brand began its Digital Transformation Journey before we starting partnering with them, but in the past few years, decline in the Pasta category (a trend beginning to reverse) acted as something of a catalyst which accelerate Digital Transformation across the organization. Proof points can be found in the form of activations in content and influencer marketing as well as social intelligence—all activities that the brand prioritized as a way to help combat disruptions in marketing and business.
Topics ranged from artificial intelligence, to bots (both the good and bad kinds) to the potential of voice technology to integrating data systems and many more. All have roots in digital whether from a tech perspective or a human usage point of view. And while the technology advances as does human adoption, the discussions had weren't all that different from when business began migrating to the Web or mobile.
What's Next In Digital Transformation? We shared our broader perspective on Digital Transformation with this group of practitioners in terms of what's likely coming next. From our perspective brands will be grappling with opportunities across three core areas with specific connectivity to marketing and communications:
The On-Demand Expectations of Consumers:
Apps, automation, artificial intelligence, mobile connectivity and a mature tech infrastructure now allows consumers to get what they want, when and how they want it like never before. These elevated expectations are highly disruptive for brands who are now dealing with loyalty-based responsiveness, convenience and a customer experience that feels frictionless and on-demand.
The Complete Fragmentation of Media:
With ad blockers, false reporting bots, a decline in traditional television viewing, the rise of digital video and influencers—marketing has finally been hit by the meteor it always knew was coming. Media is completely fragmented and programmatic solutions have resulted in unfortunate ad placements that put a brand’s reputation at risk. The benefits of data driven insights have yet to deliver on its potential. Marketers must adapt or die in the pursuit of finding new ways to reach and engage audiences at scale.
The Activist Economy:
On the cultural front—consumers are not only empowered to behave as activists thanks to social media—they are now polarized and motivated to do so and no brand is immune. Millennials in today’s polarized environment are causing brands to anticipate and respond to consumer’s needs in ways that transcend transactions and even emotions. Brands increasingly find themselves associated with societal issues where consumers, employees and even media demand to know their stance. In this economy, brands will be forced to re-examine and re-align their societal values and not just the value proposition of their products.
Digital Transformation runs the risk of being an overused buzzword (it likely already is) but those of us doing the heavy lifting to help our organizations evolve know it's just shorthand for the never-ending task of adapting to a dynamic business environment fueled by cultural social and technological shifts. It's an infinite loop and the journey never ends.
This was my tenth consecutive year attending SXSW. This means I started attending in my mid thirties during a very different time in tech, marketing and culture. There's no need to go into how different these things were or bask in the memories of those early years. What's still special about SXSW is that many of the people who were pioneers during that time still attend joined by a new generation in a now mature market where the Googles, Facebooks, Snapchats and Sprinkler's of the world operate.
BUT, outside of the informal conversations in the convention hallways, the restaurants and bars I noticed an interesting trend. There was almost a theme in terms of the panels that addressed inclusion in tech—mainly defining that inclusion through diversity in gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. This is obviously a good thing as many organizations are dedicating time and resources to address gaps and divides in these areas especially in specific industries. Diversity in these areas should be challenged. How women are treated in tech should be discussed. What hurdles minorities face should be issues we speak about out in the open...
Visa's Everywhere Initiative supports and encourages female led startups
What About Age Diversity? What was absent from debate and discussion is an increasing reality that in the start-up, tech, and even marketing worlds (to name a few), there's increasingly less diversity in age especially at the 50 plus range. This dynamic affects all people regardless of background and it begs the question if people in this age range have a fair shot at applying their years of wide experience to compliment the energy and distinct skills of younger colleagues. As a forty something GenXer, this is something I am thinking about a good deal—what happens when I cross that threshold of 50? Will my experience be valued or viewed as antiquated? Tech and marketing especially are fast moving spaces and even if you adapt your skills and stay ahead of the curve—age may be held against you. They are also industries where you are expected to look and act the part, especially if engaging with millennial audiences is a part of the job.
Being The Change Despite the lack of age diversity or inclusion for that matter in these industries being a topic—it's something that's worth talking about. Mixed generations who work together, Boomers Xers and Millenials reflect the same generations we create both digital experiences and build brands for. This goes well beyond these two industries. We have much to learn from each other, and should band together ensure employers both know and see the value in it. I'll be thinking much more on this topic and have some ideas. If you'd like to be a part of it—let me know in the comments.
Whether SNL knows it or not—they have just nailed the kinds of meetings marketing executives on both the brand and agency side will be having for the months if not years to come. While one team pitches "Cheeto executives" the same idea over and over again involving political hot topics—the other team in futility keeps trying to bring the brand back to more basic truths. People eat Cheetos because it's fun and they taste good.
The spoof was in reaction to the 2017 Superbowl, where several brands in reflection of a polarized climate took a definitive stance on where they stood. Knowingly or not, SNL hits a very real chord that marketers must carefully evaluate. Brands don't like being irrelevant or out of touch with culture, and when a culture is divided and polarized—it puts pressure on the brand to become or stay relevant. But in that rush to relevancy, brands are going to have to answer some key questions or risk out of touch with what they actually are.
Key Questions Brands Will Need Answered Before Taking a Definitive Stance
Do we have a right to weigh in on a specific societal issue? When marketers wax poetic over the effectiveness of value-driven campaigns such as #Likeagirl, they often overlook that the brand in such case (Always) has a built in right to cultivate a conversation around woman empowerment. Without a genuine right to join or lead a conversation—a brand stance will fall flat.
Have we uncovered and articulated our core values? Brands have personalities like people—and they can often hold values. Not all brands have done the work needed to define what that guiding "north star" is and without this—they risk sailing into consumer activist waters without a compass.
Do our core values align with our value proposition to the consumer/customer? Does the average Nordstrom consumer have the same values as a Budweiser consumer? Brands must go beyond traditional demographic data and see their consumers in more nuanced ways.
Is our brand's business operations a good representative of the values we are championing? Audi's Superbowl ad looked different from the faces and gender of their executive ranks. Brands that haven't aligned marketing with business operations must way the risk and rewards of taking a stance especially if there is a gap between communications and operations.
Does the societal issue fit into our higher purpose at the company/corporate level? Does your brand operate under a broader "corporate" brand structure or are they the same? Either way when engaging with consumer's and taking a stance—a brand's values should align with the corporation.
Who will we possibly alienate—who doesn't share the same values we do? Taking a stance doesn't guarantee that everyone will agree with you even if the company and CMO think it's the right thing to do. Brands will need to be prepared to handle scenarios where even the most positive messaging may be as interpreted as offensive or disingenuous.
SNL's Cheeto skit may have been fictitious but it's closer than they likely know in terms of how brands will wrestle with when they should stand for something or not or if so, how. And in polarizing times—the stakes have never been so high.
This year's Superbowl was historic on two accounts:
1. It is the first Superbowl to have ever been won in overtime 2. It will be known as the Superbowl that brought Brand Activism into the mainstream
What Is Brand Activism? Simply put—it's when a brand decides to take a definitive stance on a societal issue and bring it front and center into its messaging or value proposition. And it's not totally new—one of the most well known examples of Brand Activism is P&G's #Likeagirl campaign which artfully brought the societal issue if gender equality into its core message of empowerment. Brand activism is part art, part science and part sociology. When done right, it aligns the brand and company's values with the values of consumers. When done wrong—it's heavy handed, forced, contrived or disconnected from how the company and brand functions.
When Should a Brand Take a Stance? A complex question to answer and it's a different answer for different brands. Some brands will look to Brand Activism as a way to remain or obtain relevancy with consumers and audiences. Others will do it because it is in line with either the company's or brand's stated values. And yet others may have a direct stake in the issue.
84 Lumber for example (a brand most people have never heard of) is in the midst of a recruiting campaign and logically who and how they hire is an issue likely on their minds:
"Under owner Maggie Hardy Magerko, the daughter of founder Joe Hardy, 84 Lumber currently operates more that 250 stores across the U.S. and it's planning to expand further by putting up new outlets on the West Coast.
Sunday's Super Bowl ad comes as the company is in the middle of a recruitment campaign."
But there may be more than just employment at stake—from 84 Lumber's Website:
Brand Activism When Done Right Means Both Living and Speaking a Brand's Values One can make the case that what 84 Lumber is doing is using a platform and compelling storytelling that supports the values which are true to the company. It took a chance to communicate those values on such a large stage and as a result—has the attention and awareness of a broader audience. Is this what the brand hoped to achieve? Likely—but there may be deeper foundational forces at play.
Brand Activism in a Politically Charged Climate Given recent events regarding Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the U.S.—the world is debating with itself. Individuals are questioning traditional institutions such as government and media and an air of uncertainty remains constant. In this world, brands are beginning to become more vocal around the issues they know their consumers think about and in the next four years at minimum, as brands look to fill the trust gap left by government and media—Brand Activism will become part of how they are built and maintained.
If a brand is irrelevant in our lives—it is a brand on the decline. Some brands have to work harder than others to remain relevant. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and other brands that we interact with on an hourly, daily or weekly basis are easily made relevant in our lives given our interactions as users. Other brands often have to work harder to remain relevant.
This year's Super Bowl is a good gut check for brands who will be working to remain highly relevant in the hearts and minds of consumers already in a committed relationship with the brand as well as those who aren't. Advertising and brand storytelling often reflects the culture, trends and increasingly the societal issues of the day. But in bringing the three together it also presents a tall order for today's brands who will likely hit the target with some and totally miss with others:
Culture: The context of which we live in often reflected by entertainment, news, media etc.
Trends: What's getting our attention at the time—things that impact how we live and work ranging from technology to art, music etc.
Societal Issues: The topics of our time reflecting social-economical and cultural context. The things we debate or deem critical to society.
Many advertisers during this year's big game find themselves at the intersection of culture, trends and societal issues. As a result, they are going to need to answer the question of "was it worth it" in a more nuanced ways. On face value—measuring the effectiveness by a Super Bowl ad in terms of views is the most traditional way to do it. But for brands who are dialed up at the intersection of culture, trends and societal issues—measuring views will not be enough. They must also break down sentiment indicators such as:
• Likes/Dislikes • Positive Responses (media, social, search) • Negative Responses media, social, search) • New Subscriptions and Followers • Lost Subscriptions and Followers
One of this year's Superbowl Ads which is operating at the intersection of culture, trends and societal issues is Audi—taking on equal pay through its ad and subsequent hashtag #Driveprogess. From Adweek:
The 60-second spot, posted Wednesday to YouTube and Facebook and closing in on 5 million views as of noon Friday, has a remarkably high ratio of negative sentiment—almost 40,000 dislikes to just 4,000 likes. There are two separate criticisms—one, that the ad is simply leftist propaganda; and two, that it is hypocritical because of the company’s heavily male leadership team. (Audi AG’s board of directors, too, has six men and no women.)
The Pressure to Remain Relevant for Brands In a Politically Charged Culture is High 2017's Superbowl advertising is a reflection of today's culture in that brands increasingly feel the need to be a part of the dialogue despite societal divisions—so we're likely to see more brands attempting to be relevant at the intersection of culture, trends and societal issues. As a bonus—it also demonstrates a level of "responsibility" especially if the brand feels like it's taking the right stance on the right issues. However, success in this space cannot be discerned by reach alone. Sentiment metrics will become increasingly important for brands asking the question:
We're entering a new era of consumer activism as a result of societal divisions, a lack of distrust in once trusted institutions such as media and the mainstreaming of peer to peer information sharing enabled through social media. But how far should brands go to take a stance?
The answer to this question is as complex as the issue itself. For some brands, it's a matter of public perception, for others— a matter of principle and for others, it means aligning the values of their brand with the values of their consumers:
Taking a Stance Is Not Without Risk This Sunday, Budweiser will be airing an ad that takes on the issue of immigration head on. It does so in a powerful and emotive way—tying it to to its heritage and making the case that the brand would not be what it is today without immigration.
Budweiser's message for what they stand for and believe in is clear—but the question left unanswered at this point is how the message will resonate with the millions of consumers who have affinity for the brand. Will some cheer the move while others feel alienated by it? Will the typical Budweiser consumer appreciate the not so subtle stance? For every action there is a reaction which prompts a response from brands and for Budweiser, what's yet to be seen is the full reaction to their message.
Balancing Consumer With Brand Activism If we're seeing a perfect storm for consumer activism, then by logic the cause and effect becomes a form of brand activism. And this is where brands will need to do a gut check on their values and the alignment with the values of their consumers. Much like how social sentiment and search engines provided indicators for what people REALLY thought about Donald Trump—brands will have to have the finger on the pulse of their core consumers now more than ever. The stakes could not be any higher for the relationship between consumer and brand.
Consumer Activism: Just Getting Started Since the inauguration of president Trump, we've seen protests seemingly organized on a dime whether it be The Women's March, The March for Life or the recent immigration protests at local airports. These actions, however will not be limited to the protests in public but also in protests of the purse or at least the #hashtag. Case in point—when Uber announced that it would be removing surge pricing to pick up the slack caused by NYC cab drivers who joined immigration protests it was seen by some customers as profiting from an issue they vehemently disagreed with.
And from this, the #Deleteuber "movement" was born with people screen grabbing their deletion of the app, swearing allegiance to Uber's competition and encouraging peers to do the same. While consumer activism isn't new by any stretch of the imagination—today's record levels of distrust in once trusted institutions (see Edelman's Trust Barometer) combined with peer connectivity sets the stage for a dramatic increase of the phenomena.
From Brand Awareness to Consumer Activism For brands to raise their level of readiness in an era where consumer activism becomes more commonplace—marketers must think about four key stages in addition to the traditional funnel. Each stage carries with it a positive or negative impact for a brand.
Awareness + Positive: Consumer has general awareness of a brand and its values and finds them relevant - Negative: Consumer has low awareness of brand and its values and brand is not relevant
Affinity + Positive: Consumer has a high affinity for the brand and preference as a result - Negative: Consumer has low affinity for the brand and does not show loyalty
Advocacy + Positive: Consumer will recommend brand to others and actively promote it - Negative: Consumer will speak negatively about brand and actively criticize it
Activism + Positive: Consumer will actively defend or take action which benefits brand - Negative: Consumer will actively take action which damages brand (reputation or financial)
Source: Buzzfeed Earning Trust in an Era of Consumer Activism Emerging societal demands and divides combined with peer connectivity provide the perfect storm for consumer activism and brands must find ways to earn not only the loyalty but trust of their consumers. Edelman's 2016 Earned Brand study outlines that most brands engage consumers in a way that interest and involve them but fall short of getting them invested to the point where consumers would advocate on their behalf or act as "activists" in their favor.
Handle With Care: Consumer Activism Will Force Brands to Examine Their Values If nothing else, consumer activists will force brands to ask themselves "what do we stand for"? The biggest risk for a brand in dealing with a low trust environment is to act inauthentically, contrived or in a way that feels opportunistic. Still, consumers will continue to evaluate brands not only by how relevant they are in their lives—but how responsible they feel they are. Or to put it another way, how much they feel they have in common in terms of their values. If a brand today cannot express or articulate those values—it risks leaving its intent and action open to interpretation.
Gotten into an argument on Facebook lately? You're not alone. Find yourself nodding violently in agreement with something someone posted?
Even more common.
We find ourselves in an environment where everyone seems to be acting like an "activist" for the views they find themselves aligning with. The rub? It's not easy being a good activist. The worst ones tend to alienate others because they become so deafening, vociferous and one dimensional in service of their cause—they become difficult to relate to. The best ones are able to mobilize those who share their views while building bridges to those who don't. But many of us are mistaking being engaged for taking action or skipping taking action all together and leveraging social media as a form of activism. These things are not the same and build off one another. Awareness In Today's Filter Bubble One of the most impactful societal measures of social networks is that they've become our go to sources of information, news, opinions, and an ever stream of feedback based on what's happening in our world. However, as the recent U.S. election underscored—networks are flawed by design in that we often surround ourselves with peer groups "like us" which creates a phenomena that's been labeled "filter bubbles". Our awareness is filtered by our often likeminded peers—and so a steady stream of content and feedback loops that are reflective of our own bias reinforces the way we see things.
Engagement vs. Action Another side-effect of social media is that it tricks our brains into thinking being engaged is actually taking a tangible action.
It is not.
I was recently reminded of this when I read a story about a mosque burning down not long after the Trump administration has signed executive orders to pause immigration from select countries. My first inclination was to "react" to the story and then share it with my peers to raise awareness. I stopped myself however because I realized that although I was engaging around an event that troubled me—I wasn't taking any tangible action to change the outcome of the event. I stopped myself and made a donation to the Go Fund Me page associated with the story. Only after that did I share the story and encourage others to take similar action. Engagement is desirable and on social media—likes, comments, shares are all forms of engagement but they are not outcome altering actions and many of us have confused engagement for action. The Risks and Rewards of Social Media Activism Social networks have empowered us to in some ways mimic the dynamics of activism. It gives us a street corner, a megaphone and even a soap box to stand on so our friends, business contacts and peers know exactly what we stand for. And like the crowds who pass the activist and megaphone—some if not many will engage, after all most of us share the same filter bubbles. But for how long? After passing the activist on the street corner, when we just want to get home after a long days work—we begin to tune out the words no matter how sincere or earnest. With the megaphone and empowerment to become an "activist" for our beliefs and values comes the burden of alienation—there will be times when people just won't want to engage, no matter what their stance on an issue.
What's happening to our social newsfeeds? They've become a reflection of what we've curated over time. In some cases, they are a daily validation mechanism for ourselves and like minded peers. In other cases—they foster dialogue and debate. But they aren't a substitute for taking meaningful action even if a like, share or comment satisfies our urge in the moment.
If you’ve come here looking for the latest thinking on virtual reality, drones and autonomous driving—you’ve come to the wrong place. Marketers are an interesting bunch—we pride ourselves on “being in the know”, with some good reason… Part of our jobs are to stay one step ahead of the game so we are better prepared for the changes that inevitably effect the business of our industry. But in the pursuit of staying ahead of future trends—we often overlook massive shifts that need to be operationalized over the next five years, if not decade. In the pursuit of keeping our eye on the ball—I’ve identified six near term trends influencing the business of marketing:
From Media Channels To Media Ecosystem Blame Digital. Just when we were getting used to shifting efforts and dollars to reflect not only print, television, radio and the internet—the internet itself has fragmented into a million tiny little pieces which blur the lines between paid, owned, earned and even social when it comes to dollar spend—and that’s not even getting into how it all get’s measured. Case in point—in the past year, MTV has seen it’s traditional television viewership of the Video Music Awards decline 34%. However if you look closely at the numbers, digital views including Facebook Live Streaming increased 70%. The problem here? MTV has yet to monetize the ever fragmented and complex digital media ecosystem and still relies on traditional TV advertisers to make money.
This makes the jobs of the media creators, buyers, sellers and strategists, well—complicated. Marketers are reluctant to embrace this complexity in their need to reach the largest and most targeted audiences they can. But in the near term—this complexity must be dealt with by diving deeper into digital and re-defining how, where and when dollars are spent within the complete media ecosystem vs. the easiest parts of it to put spend against.
From Text That Tells To Visuals That Show The entire Web is being re-built for visual and video content. Before you dismiss this as “obvious”—we must take into account that the previous and dominant version of the Internet became mainstream with the advent of Google’s search engine and search was and to some extent still is a game of text, meta tags, keywords and text based organic content popularity. Now let’s look at demographics: Boomers, and GenX grew up on traditional literacy in the written word. Millennials and GenZ are growing up on what I call “visual literacy” which is accentuated by platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube which are video and visual dominated as opposed to text driven.
It is this visual literacy combined with the changing face of how we not only search for but receive content which is changing before our very eyes. marketers have spent years perfecting their Keywords and then finding ways to get text based links to their written content shared on social media but increasingly it’s video that gets shared directly through a multitude of apps that is becoming the dominant social currency. Brands have yet to master modern forms of video and visual storytelling as even the rules are changing in this space. Snapchat for example favors short, compelling vertical video formats which tend to perform well. For marketers—many who built their craft on taglines or standard 30 second television commercials—these forms of video content (not ads) are foreign and still largely untapped. Marketers will need to re-think video, visual storytelling and the production of these things from the ground up in this new world if they are to remain relevant.
From Mobile Last To Mobile First We take for granted that Facebook is one of the most popular apps in the world and most of us access it from our mobile devices. But in the early days of Facebook—there was a time that they found themselves on the defense when it came to mobile and believe it or not—they actually didn’t get it. In less than a year—they transformed themselves into a “mobile first” company from the top down and had some of the most talented developers in the world at their disposal to see this transformation through. Unfortunately, even the world’s biggest and most resourceful brands and agencies do not have these resources nor the imperative to re-invent their organizations to think, act, and operate within the same context as their mobile consumers, customers and employees.
Thanks to Google, marketers have good reason to prioritize mobile development as their way forward since Google actually dings Websites that they deem are not responsive or functional in the mobile environment. But the shift to mobile is much more than making our Websites mobile friendly. It means we need to intimately understand how our audiences want to consume, create, share and interact with our brands. It’s one of the leading reasons we’ve seen customers shift to expressing their dissatisfaction about a brand experience or service publicly—they have a megaphone in their pocket at all times. We’ve done a disservice to our industry by treating mobile as a “duh”—it requires a complete transformation in many ways due to its impact on our daily behaviors. Facebook had it right—brands and agencies should do the same.
From Reliance On Media Companies To Being Your Own Media Company “Publishing Is The New Marketing”. Sounds good—easier said than done. But the reality is that thanks to social media—most marketers are already in the business of publishing whether they know it or not. Got a brand presence on Facebook or YouTube? Congratulations, you’re in the content business. The problem however is that most content isn’t very good and so marketers find themselves solving the wrong problem.
It’s not about creating content as much as it is about cultivating targeted and high quality audiences who want to hear from you again and again.
In the pursuit of cultivating quality audiences who not only are willing to consume a brand’s content but want to share and potentially co-create with the brand, marketers must understand how to engage with audiences not only during their “tentpole” campaigns but daily, weekly. monthly and quarterly. This is where the dynamics of marketing and publishing mix and brands are still scrambling to figure out how to do this.
From Ad-Hoc Influencer Engagement To Integrated Influence Marketing When CBS 60 Minutes does a feature on Influencer Marketing—you know it’s not fleeting trend anymore. However this space as familiar as it seems is new territory for marketers. Unlike traditional celebrities—most of these cultural influencers such as social media stars and Youtubers are creators who have built their OWN audiences using their OWN channels. So to protect their reputations with their audience—their preference is to collaborate and co-create with brands as opposed to endorse and act as spokespeople the way traditional celebrities have always done.
In addition—most brands are currently treating these kinds of partnerships as one-offs or ad-hoc engagements vs. re-thinking how they interface not only with cultural influencers but ALL influencers who often play off each other when it comes to reaching mass audiences often times through our peers. It will take years for marketers to fully evolve and build the process to support this in a much more integrated and scalable fashion beyond one off campaigns and programs. This entire space is still in its infancy.
From Brand Value Proposition To Brand Values Lock yourself in a room with the most seasoned and senior marketing executives and they will nod their heads when presented with research that reflects the purchase habits of millennials, especially one key shift—millennials are often influenced not only by the products, services and “value proposition” of the brands they buy from—they are also curious and care about how the brand acts, how it participates and what it “stands for” in a societal context. If they feel like the brand is aligned with some or all of their own personal values—these influence behaviors from purchase through to loyalty. My Employer (Edelman) produced research that most consumers are “involved” with brands but are open to “commitment”. And in many cases, being committed goes beyond traditional value proposition attributes such as quality, convenience and price.
The premise seems deceptively simple. Many brands understand this and in response have gone out of their way to show how they are “going green” or “doing good”—often through corporate channels that are responsible for these kinds of messages. But this shift goes beyond messages and block and tackle corporate communications. Marketers have mastered the art and science of building brands in the hearts and minds of consumers by balancing their emotional and rational needs. Products had to show they would actually work but the most successful brands went further and endeared themselves to consumers through appealing to their emotions (Think Nike—Just Do It)
Thanks largely to millennials—this is no longer enough. Marketers need to re-examine their value proposition and ask themselves if their brand’s “values” are clearly articulated and if their actions, marketing and every touchpoint with a consumer and customer backs this up. It goes beyond satisfying rational and emotional needs but adding the third dimension of “societal” but above all else—all three dimensions need to be true to the brand and supported by proof points. This becomes not only the job of the chief communications officer and CEO but the CEO, CMO and CEO working in tandem. Few brands have been able to successfully “stand for something” because it takes a village to pull this off right and in line with the brand values. But whether it’s #Optoutside or #LikeAGirl—when done authentically, it resonates.
If you’ve gotten this far, than you’re probably thinking that none of the above is new to you. And that’s the point—it isn’t. But the marketing industry has yet to fully make the needed shifts in most or nearly all of the above trends based on my observations and in working directly with clients. These trends each bring with them great opportunities but require companies whether brands or agencies to evolve priorities, re-evaluate staff and agency mix and place bets in areas that are still developing or require extra effort to measure. They may not be as sexy as virtual reality or cars which drive themselves—but in the next five or so years, it is how well we operationalize against these trends that may benefit marketers most in the near future.
Instincts vs. Insights Like many of you, I was wrong about who I thought would win the US election. But it wasn’t always that way — I had changed my opinion based on the “data” I was seeing and that’s where many of us are scratching our heads. My first gut instinct was formed around the time of both party conventions. Having followed both, sensing the momentum and enthusiasm of the unconventional GOP convention, I remember thinking to myself, Trump really has a chance — he’s going to tap millions of people displaced by a global economy. He’s speaking directly to the working class disenfranchised — people holding down multiple jobs in some cases and feeling like they can never get ahead. He’s giving a voice to those who feel like they have been ignored or are underrepresented. And above it all, I was picking up something in the air that felt like a change agent was wanted, even if that agent was more rough around the edges than many would have preferred…
I grew up in working class Long Island. I intuitively grasped how he could win and I was hesitant to rush to judgement over how or why millions of Americans were supporting him. Over the course of weeks and months, being the news addict that I am, I began to change my outlook on Trump’s chances.
Why? Because the polling data and news media sentiment.
The Limitations of Polling & Media Influence Day after day, I would pour over polls and read headlines that would point to trends making the case that while both candidates were unpopular, Hillary seemed to always come out on top. The media painted a picture of a Trump campaign in disarray and the tone of the majority of the coverage I could see from multiple media outlets was largely negative. Polls while far from perfect are data points. Media sentiment is also a set of data points. When you pour over this information, it begins to inform your opinions. And that’s what happened to me. My informed view shifted from Trump has a chance to Hillary is a definite win.
And I think there’s an important lesson in all of this. Was the data bad? I don’t think it’s that simple. Like some analysts have stated, it’s likely that the polling data was incomplete. Which means this data cannot be fully trusted. If a significant portion of voters didn’t feel comfortable polling but instead voiced their opinions with their votes, then the data is meaningless.
Sampling is an art that becomes harder and harder to deliver well against. All research methodologies for polling have inherent biases and it becomes clear that relying on a sample of people willing to speak to an interviewer or take a survey online is becoming more difficult to pull off accurately. Political polling is disrupted and old models don’t work. But they are still very valuable if cross analyzed through other intelligence methodologies that focus on “harder data”.
The lesson reminds me of similar learnings I’ve seen in marketing focus groups. People aren’t always honest or clearly articulate their beliefs and/or needs.
Reading Between The Lines You have to read between the lines. This is something that ethnographers often do. They immerse themselves in the lives of the people they seek to derive insights from. They go deep in place of skimming vast quantities of data points both quantitative and qualitative. They go heavy on empathy but also possess the right amount of analytical rigor to translate observations into insights.
And what about the media sentiment? Did I misread it? No, I read it accurately but like many others, I underestimated the impact that media sentiment would have on potential Trump supporters. In retrospect the negative media sentiment for Trump likely mobilized his base and even some who were on the fence. Edelman (my employer) has been producing data for years which shows that trust in media is on the decline and urging us to pay close attention to social signals when forming opinions and strategies.
Search & Social Signals Provide Additional Clues And let’s not forget about search. As far as data goes — Google may have presented a more accurate representation of how voters were inclined to act. Trump related searches showed dominance over Hillary inquiries in the final days of the election and higher volume in states such as Pennsylvania where polls projected Clinton to win. The search volume from Google presented signals that were largely missed by both pundits and the media — yet they aligned with voter behavior.
Insights, Instinct AND Data — But Never In Isolation
This political season more than ever demonstrated the shortcomings of looking at data and information sources in isolation, such as polling. A lesson that I’ll take away is to not only have more faith in my instincts but also to be a better student of the impact the media has on public sentiment and how that sentiment is reflected online in the forms of social and search data. For those of us who work in marketing and communications, we’re going to need a better appreciation for the balance between instinct and insights, gut and analysis, and how deep we need to go to accurately interpret signals and multiple data points so we can better inform our thoughts and actions.
Before there was social media—before there was mobile and the video revolution, there was blogging. Once heralded as a revolution in communications and to a degree, marketing—self expression and direct publishing of the written word became an influential force to be dealt with.
Blogging, in written word form of has been a commodity for some time.
Even as I write this on the reality is less people are taking in the written word, opting instead for “junk food” media which comes in highly shareable and snackable bits of sticky, mobile optimized content.
Today however, it is content itself that has and will continue to become the commodity. Content in all forms—even mobile optimized and snackable content. There’s simply too much of it.Most of it is not very good and even if it is—the amount of effort it takes to make sure that content will travel far and wide makes for considerable effort. Many will do this well but more will fail.
So what is value in today’s connected marketing and media landscape?
Culture
The ability to create it, influence it, co-create it and integrate a brand so seamlessly in culture and relevant sub cultures.This is the next frontier of marketing and communicationsand while it has much to do with things like social, mobile and content—it is the cultural aspect that must lead while everything else follows. A very excellent article in Harvard Business Review reflects some of this shift, labeling it within the context of something Douglas Holt calls “Crowdculture”:
“While companies have put their faith in branded content for the past decade, brute empirical evidence is now forcing them to reconsider. In YouTube or Instagram rankings of channels by number of subscribers, corporate brands barely appear. Only three have cracked the YouTube Top 500. Instead you’ll find entertainers you’ve never heard of, appearing as if from nowhere.
YouTube’s greatest success by far is PewDiePie, a Swede who posts barely edited films with snarky voice-over commentary on the video games he plays. By January 2016 he had racked up nearly 11 billion views, and his YouTube channel had more than 41 million subscribers.”
The challenge for brands is that they often times cannot create culture by themselves.Today’s culture creators often thrive in “sub cultures”—niche groups that exist under more mainstream areas whether it be food, sports, fashion—lest you think this only applies to “consumer brands” it does not.Subcultures exist in business as well and continue to diversify as business itself becomes more specialized and niche.
Brands and Organizations Must Become Collaborators and Co-Creators of Culture
Today and tomorrow’s challenge for brands and organizations is to tweak their marketing and communications infrastructure so they can effectively collaborate with influencers of culture across the spectrum.If brands cannot create culture from scratch—they can co-create it with the right partners across the paid, owned, earned and social spectrum.But to do this at scale, they must understand the ecosystem of influence and re-structure internally to connect that ecosystem and approach peer to peer influence from all sides.
The Influencer Ecosystem
Brands and organizations who wish to influence culture and become co-creators of it, must begin to coordinate how they approach working with those who wield influence, coming at it from different directions. For example, TIME magazine featured a cover telling us that we should “eat butter”. While earned in nature, the story and the journalists behind it are playing a key role in the resurgence of butter and how Americans are re-thinking fat. It’s an example of media influencing culture—in this particular example, this kind of influence cannot be bought—it must be earned, however, increasingly cultural influencers such as “YouTubers” require paid means to collaborate with. The influencer ecosystem can be broken down as such:
Cultural Influencers These can be celebrities but increasingly, it is the influencers of subcultures—those who are building audiences via Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube etc. that are becoming today’s trusted voices. In 2015, Variety reported on a survey which displayed a trend where digital celebrities (YouTubers etc.) began eclipsing traditional celebrities in terms of popularity:
“Sehdev predicts that within five years, YouTube stars will consume the entire top-20 celebrity influencer list, and aging teens will grow into a sizable fanbase for online talent overall. But that will require YouTube stars to remain genuine and relatable as they gain in popularity.”
However despite this trend, there are significant implications for brands. As stated above, the digital stars must remain genuine and relatable which makes working with them a challenge as brands must learn to collaborate vs. dictate heavy handed marketing. Also, brands must develop repeatable ways they can work with all levels of these types of influencers. As it is an emerging space often requiring complex contracts, disclaimers and transparency—it brings new operational dynamics to the table.
Reputational Influencers These can range from employees to thought leaders to analysts and experts and while they often influence consumers or customers who are highly informed and connected themselves. The challenge here for brands is that much of what they do in this space is often times disconnected from what they do with cultural influencers—but should be more integrated. Not long ago, Edelman (my employer) announced a strategic partnership with a start up called Dynamic Signal. One of the key benefits of their platform Voicestream is the ability to harness the networks of either cultural or reputational influencers acting as amplifiers of content that a brand places in front of them. Integration and accountability in terms of performance is now becoming possible, but brands must first connect efforts here.
Media Influencers As the TIME example illustrates—media in all its forms led by journalists and the media companies they work with can often influence culture and sub cultures also appealing to informed audiences who often share their content. But it isn’t just the “professionals”—while blogging itself has become much of a commodity there is still a role for blogger networks with niche audiences who have built audience and work with brands (often requiring a financial transaction) to incorporate their products and services into their content. But here again whether earned or paid—integration opportunity exists as what all three groups have in common is getting through to peer networks who then influence each other.
“Content Marketing” came after social media and mobile and it enjoyed a good run.But it’s not enough to create content in a complex media ecosystem that makes it extremely difficult to break though and earn attention.Brands will have to learn how to influence culture and sub cultures by collaborating with those who create it externally while coordinating their fractured functions internally. And they’ll have to do it in ways that can be repeated and scaled.
Q: When should a brand act like a publisher? A: Ad blocking software
You find yourself watching an entertaining series starring your favorite celebrity and Jerry Seinfeld. Or maybe it's your favorite internet cat celebrities joining forces in a holiday themed music video. Or it's a *satirical article from The Onion showing up in your Facebook feed. What the above have in common is the fact that none of them are the advertising most of us grew up with on our televisions or even desktops for that matter—but they are all working in the service of brands and organizations.
Welcome to the age of brands as publishers—designed for mobile screens, Google algorithms, social news feeds and driven by essential success metrics: "sharing and subscribing".
A brand marketing meets publishing model is nothing new, nor is the Hero, Hub, Hygiene approach coined by Google originally as an approach for YouTube. But as many brands are finding out, adding the nimble publishing approach to your existing global behemoth marketing machine is a daunting task. Just like any significant shift organizations must make to any part of their business—marketers both at the brand and agency level must find common ground in how they define major components:
Brand Platform A common mistake made in the worlds of marketing, branding and advertising is confusing a campaign with a brand platform which is akin to confusing a banana with a banana tree. For the sake of clarity—"Dove Campaign For Real Beauty" is a brand platform, while Dove Sketches was an activation that evolved into campaign like territory. As referenced in Building Modern Brands—a brand platform is foundational in nature and modern brands are evolving to reflect not only rational and emotional benefits, but articulating what they stand for in a societal context. Can campaigns be derived from brand platforms? Yes, but they are more evergreen in nature vs. moment in time and should influence all activations no matter how strategic or tactical.
Activations Unlike a brand platform—activations are more time and context sensitive. These are your programs, campaigns, events and other activities that will range from highly strategic and pre-planned to highly responsive and in the moment. Activations should be strategically aligned to the brand platform but also possess the flexibility to expand contextually. These are the ways the brand platform comes to life over time.
Hero Hero activations are where brands place their big bets. Typically these are the global integrated marketing campaigns though increasingly they can still be big bets without ever coming to life in traditional channels like television. These can also be big communications and engagement activations involving media and influencers. Regardless of classification, brands often times don't support more than one to two of these annually and sometimes they can extend beyond a single year.
Hub Hub activations can be more frequent and are often times less ambitious than a Hero campaign. Partnerships with media companies or digital influencers for example can often fall into Hub territory. Depending on the nature of the brand or organization—Hub activations could be as few as quarterly or as often as monthly. The rise of native advertising and sponsored content is currently fueling the popularity of Hub activations that don't always directly support a specific Hero campaign.
Hygiene Hygiene activations can fall into the "always on" "daily" or "content engine" classifications. Often times, Hygiene activations require multiple publishing touch points such as social channels or Web destinations. Barilla for example aggregates both Hygiene, Hub and Hero content onto its "**Passion For Pasta" Tumblr. Hygiene activations can be as frequent as daily and in some cases even hourly.
Hero, Hub and Hygiene all have two things in common: 1. Activations across all three must be coordinated. 2. Increasingly, they require a blend of a "marketing meets publishing mindset" in order to scale and operationalize.
And it is here where many organizations will face challenges. Integrated marketing is an apple while publishing is an orange. Increasingly brands will need both in order to remain relevant in the search engines and social news feeds of consumers and customers. To do this—marketers will have to genetically splice that apple and orange together to create an entirely new fruit, designed to work around the ad blockers and entice consumers to pause, take a bite and pass it on.
*The Udder Truth was created by Dairy Management Inc. in partnership with Edelman **Passion For Pasta is a Barilla Group activation executed in partnership with Edelman
Building brands in the mad men era was a relatively straight forward endeavor...
A brand needed to effectively communicate its value to the consumer, plainly stating its functional benefits and for the more enduring brands—connecting with consumers at the emotional level typically through a story told via television led advertising campaigns. The most iconic of brands over time, mastered the art of really digging into the "soul" of a brand. How it was differentiated from others and how it should be expressed in all parts of the world.
Building brands became something of a religious pursuit, with high priests and gatekeepers of brands in place to ensure that a brand did not become diluted. These guardians of brands created all kinds of doctrine meant to keep a brand's value proposition pure and true. Brands have always been built and expressed based on how they met consumers needs at the rational and emotional levels. More recently, brand stewards have been grappling with the notion of a brand's "purpose"—industry shorthand for how a brand's "values" take into account societal context. Can a brand stand for something bigger than itself? Does it exist for a higher purpose? Is there a cultural tension point that a brand has a right to participate in (or lead) a conversation around?
Data from Edelman's Brandshare study concluded that today's consumers look for and evaluate their relationship with a brand beyond traditional rational and emotional benefits into areas that veer into societal. Well over half of 10,000 consumers polled globally indicated that brands having a clear "mission and purpose" influenced how they felt about that brand.
It is this tension point that takes us back to the drawing board when it comes to the "soul" of a brand. But we cannot divorce this exercise from how a brand must be brought to life. The re-visiting of a brand's foundation requires taking another look at how it comes to life an today's always on, multi channel world. Modern brands must master the relationship between these three key facets for how brands sustain their relationship with consumers after answering what it stands for and against:
Strategy It's tempting to think at the program level (campaigns, etc.) that once a foundational brand strategy is set—we can go right to ideas and tactics both big, medium and small. Avoid the temptation. Strategy at the program level should be the nucleus of any program and it should inform and influence all ideas. It should present clearly the balance between meeting business, brand and consumer/customer objectives. Creativity Never has creativity been so important. People are rarely motivated by statistics and logic—but rich stories and experiences can lead to desired action. However, telling stories and designing useful, usable and desirable experiences requires out of the box thinking. Stories don't get shared by people unless they are exceptionally compelling, entertaining or educational. There are thousands of apps to compete with and digital influencers can often times build audiences better than brands can. Creativity is now complicated.
Agility Probably the newest and most disruptive dynamic out of the three. Most brands grapple with agility because they are still operating in a construct built for the industrial broadcast era of marketing. As I've outlined in Responsive Marketing, it's adding a layer of smaller more nimble initiatives than can help inform and even optimize the bigger more comprehensive programs that are still linear in nature. What both layers have in common is that they must move away from the launch and walk away model and move toward a model that puts various "things" in a live environment and adapts along the way. Google's Ben Jones recently pointed out the elephant in the room when it comes to agility:
"Advertising has radically shifted to be more agile, useful, and relevant in the always-on age of mobile. Yet the foundation of creative work, the creative brief, remains largely unchanged."
The creative brief shouldn't go away, but if you truly buy into the notion of agility then the doctrine of briefs and briefing must become more dynamic than static while preserving the ability to influence big, medium and even small ideas.
It's been said that the more things change, the more they remain the same. In the context of building and preserving brands—this holds somewhat true. A brand becomes a brand only the the hearts and minds of consumers. And today's consumers have ever evolving values, demographics and technology/lifestyle habits. We didn't walk around with super computers in our pockets years ago and millennials are a far cry from baby boomers.
Modern brands will be built and re-built on foundations which reflect these evolutions but they must come to life informed by strategy, inspired by creativity and designed for agility.
Moment in time—the world seems obsessed with the renaissance of app led live video streaming and the rivalry between MeerKat and Twitter backed Periscope.
Debating who will win is a moot point.
The real winner is digital video in all its forms—especially if it involves a popular app like Snapchat or a mobile optimized popular platform such as Netflix. The demise of traditional television happened somewhere around the time that YouTube began gaining popularity alongside with DVRs that empowered us to skip ads. Since then, things have only gotten worse for traditional, tied to the box television viewing. A recent poll found that millennials find YouTube entertainment and the stars who create it, more relatable and entertaining than TV.
And while YouTube continues its video dominance—content creators are flocking to where the future audiences are being built up. Take Snapchat's Discover "channel" on the native app featuring a mash up between "traditional"media companies such as CNN alongside more modern counterparts like Vice. What all of the media companies in Snapchat's Discover pilot have in common is that they realize that video is more popular than ever with today's content consumers—only they don't consume it the same way our parents did.
A Nightmare For Brands And The Media Industry The complete and utter fragmentation of video consumption has not been lost on those who standardized how brands and advertisers are supposed to measure the effectiveness of 30 second spots built during the industrialized era of madison avenue when TV consumption and the impressions that came with it, was a simple thing to measure. No longer—in fact it is Nielsen itself who has recognized that video viewing has changed dramatically, and they've put forth an effort called "Total It Up" to attempt to bridge the divide between how brand managers are incentivized to measure results with the reality of how people are actually consuming video content today.
Live Video Streaming Only Adds To The Fragmentation The race between MeerKat, Periscope and likely Google to dominate the latest trend in video consumption is significant but must be chalked up to a bigger trend that's been in the making for the past decade at minimum. Video is more relevant and popular than ever both from a consumption standpoint as well as production. But it's becoming impossible for brands and organizations to measure their effectiveness because they are simply not built for the future but rather for the past when TV and YouTube ruled the video world. Those days have rapidly come to an end and live streaming is the latest trend to accelerate the splintering.
Before SXSW Interactive had even gotten a chance to take its first breath, media outlets like Mashable were already asking if it had jumped the Shark? The sentiment is understandable. After all these years, SXSW is still kind of enigma. Some call it a conference and others say its more of a festival. Some say this year's SXSW felt "somber" while others asserted that fresh break through technology such as MeerKat, reasserted its relevance as a place where new startups can get their footing and enchant early adopters in the process. Other's still question its value for marketers and agencies (tell that to senior ad execs like Tony Weisman and Bob Greenberg who mingled amongst the geeks).
The truth is, SXSW is what you make of it. If you want to go there and party all day and all night, you can do that. If you want to spend your time going from session to session to find golden nuggets of insights, you can do that too. If you want to network and explore business opportunities—you can also do that. It's not the size of SXSW that matters, it's how you make it work for you. In that vein, here are some of the ways I made SXSW work for me this year.
Finding Opportunities To Collaborate SXSW has no shortage of tech companies, platforms or niche players that can make for interesting collaborators. This year I had great meetings with Hootsuite and Spredfast and MeerKat to plant seeds in some cases and in others explore specific opportunities. The face time you can get at SXSW is high quality and the casual setting makes relationship building easy.
Hosting An Intimate Business Function Because SXSW can be so overwhelming—it's a great opportunity to create an intimate business environment where professionals can share thoughts and ideas in a salon like setting. This year, we teamed up with Jeremiah Owyang and Crowd Companies and hosted a combination of his council members and some of our clients for an insightful panel featuring executives from Whole Foods, Hallmark and Verizon. Business can be done at SXSW—you just have to plan for it.
Connecting With Colleagues, Clients & Friends I'm cognizant that we have all three groups present at SXSW and I make it a point to distribute my time wisely during my few days. Several of our Edelman clients had activations this year and it was great to see how they were doing in real time, while building new client relationships in some cases and reinforcing existing ones. Likewise, many of our colleagues go, and it's a great way to bond with them outside of a formal session. And lastly, there are industry friends I get to see their once a year—a great way to catch up and compare notes.
Attending Panels For me personally, it's difficult to squeeze in panels with everything else but I usually manage to get a couple in. This year's highlight for me was Google's offsite "Fire Starters" panel which featured several speakers from the UX, creative and planning sides of the house. I finally got to see Russell Davies speak which was a treat, and in a setting where "new ideas" are prized, his take on "no new ideas" was a good reminder that brands need to work harder at getting the basics right.
Blowing Off Some Steam I'm not going to lie—there are some great parties and activities at SXSW. This year I found myself on a dance floor listening to NAZ and in a stadium watching the Flaming Lips do what they do. I also went Spinning with a friend (first time I've ever done that). But the reality is that SXSW is not the only show in town when it comes to parties and entertainment—it goes with the territory and can be fun if you don't overdo it.
Live video streaming is nothing new. Many have tried it—and it's always sort of taken off, but never really went "mainstream". MeerKat might just change all of that. But how will we know? For starters, it's got a really good shot at stealing the show at SXSW next week—a venue that's been known to uncover the next big shiny object in social. It was after all, SXSW that put Twitter on the map, then subsequently Foursquare and more recently though with less impact, Vine.
Part Snapchat, part Twitter, and part video streaming app—MeerKat lets you effortlessly stream video from your mobile phone using your Twitter connections as a starting point. It's incredibly easy to get up and running—once you download the app, you are streaming within seconds. You can stream on demand or you can schedule a stream in advance. You can subscribe to other streams, like them or comment as they stream—the comments show up as tweets which creates an odd but interesting synergy with Twitter. When you are done with a live stream, you can save it as a video on your phone which then gives you the opportunity to edit and post at a later time.
The problem with live video streaming has always been that people's lives are not always that interesting—so you have to question who would tune into a live stream of you teaching a dog a new trick? But, that could be said for all of social media—it's everyday people doing everyday things.
Unless you're a YouTube, Vine, Instagram Celebrity or perhaps in the near future—a "MeerKat star". And this is what could very well happen to MeerKat. On Vine a whole new breed of performers built new audiences who mastered the six second medium. Then they took that over to Snapchat and build audiences there. MeerKat could follow the same pattern and it's turning into big business as Twitter recently acquired Niche, a platform that specializes in connecting brands with influencers in emerging channels (everything but YouTube).
Which brings us to Twitter. Why hasn't Twitter launched their own version of live streaming, native to the Twitter platform or as a sister app such as Vine? That could be coming next. Or they could offer to gobble up MeerKat. In the meantime as thousands of tech influencers descend upon SXSW next week—you can expect to see a barrage of MeerKat live video streams in your social feeds. First the tech influencers, then come the brands, and then comes the talent who build large audiences on the platform. This is the pattern you might just see unfold in the next few months.
Brands—get your teams experimenting with MeerKat now, and keep an eye out for the influencers you want to start working with. Even if Twitter comes up with their own solution—you'll be better prepared.
Once upon a time I was a Creative Director. Creative Directors typically come from one of two backgrounds—"art" or "copy". Having more of a visual design foundation, I started there—but also learned the techniques of "concepting" and getting to what's known in the marketing industry as "a big idea". Things were simpler back then...
Big Ideas vs. Ruling The "Aggregators" Today, if you want your message and or communications to break through—you must understand how the "aggregators" work. What's an "aggregator"? Google, Facebook, Twitter, E-mail, Text Apps, Snapchat, Flipboard... it's anywhere content can be aggregated. It's not the homepage of a media company—it's not their apps either. It's the newsfeeds we either search or browse from. So who is ruling the aggregators?
Buzzfeed Mashable The Huffington Post Business Insider The Onion
There's more—but these media companies all have something in common—they blend editorial sensibilities with a deep understanding for how media spreads (or doesn't) online. They know when something is about to trend and generate the right content at the right time. They don't put out bland perspectives but rather generate headlines and take angles that are instantly snackable, interesting and sometimes even controversial. They package content with a keen eye for millennial relevancy (hello President Obama using a selfie stick). They are masters of catering to the algorithms that are the motors which make the aggregators run. The Big Idea Now the traditional creative process looks a bit different. It goes something like this:
Planner leads some type of research Ideally, a meaningful insight is uncovered Creative team is briefed Creative brief is drafted "Big idea" is identified Program is developed around big idea Program is launched and measured
It's a lot of steps, but despite the approach—it's still a relevant model as many of the advertising campaigns that resonate with us typically involve some version of the above process. During this year's Superbowl—the "Like a Girl" campaign from Always enjoyed a second wind of popularity boosted by the game's visibility and amplified via social and traditional media. Like a Girl is a big idea fueled by a powerful insight and it takes on a societal tension point—girls believe they can do anything when they are young, but something happens as they mature.
Where The Magic Can Happen So here's where I see both a challenge and an opportunity. In one model you've got a modern media centric approach leading the charge to dominate the aggregators. In the other model you've got a "creative" (for lack of a better word) approach, which comes at it a bit differently—seeking to uncover a powerful insight that can fuel a compelling narrative. Today, the opportunity for brands and organizations seeking to own the aggregators is to take the best of both approaches—seizing on a trend as effectively as Buzzfeed and crafting communications as powerful as #Likeagirl.
The challenge is that as brands start embracing the "act like a media company " mantra, they often have fledgling editorial operations working in silos from their creative teams. Neither team brings every critical skill to the table—they both have the potential to complete each other, but more times than not, they don't or if they do, it's an awkward dance. Some will get it right—Rue LaLa for example has both a content team with an editorial director paired along side a design team led by a creative director. It's the type of model I think we'll see more organizations adapt (editorial and creative).
In the quest for marketers and communicators to "own the aggregators"—social savvy creative and editorial talent will be needed. And perhaps the greater need will be the willingness for that organization to empower those teams to produce non bland, compelling content that takes a stance or puts an opinion forth. These are the things that break through and influence the algorithm the aggregators thrive on and the creative/editorial combination will become a necessity in order to break through.
According to the US Department of labor—the average tenure at at job for 2014 is 4.6 years. In less than a month, I'll be celebrating five years at Edelman, so I thought it would be a good time to reflect in what can be learned in five years, not just on the job but in life as well. I'm a big believer that looking back can help you look forward, so here are are a few things I've learned over the past five years.
Mentorship Comes In Many Forms The traditional image of a mentor is someone who takes you under their wing, puts time aside for you, and imparts wisdom—often a more senior person who you view as established or experienced in areas you yourself seek experience in. But mentorship is really another way of thinking about relationships, and growing from them in the process. I can think of several relationships I've established in the past five years both with people senior to me and junior alike, where I learn and grow from. As a result, I've come to view mentorship, both giving and receiving it a bit differently. It's a mindset about relationships more than a formal arrangement.
Travel Requires Discipline I do my fair share of traveling. Not as much as some of my colleagues or peers outside of my company but also more than others. One thing I've learned over the years is that it requires discipline. Sleep, food, drinks, work and even socialization—they can all be overdone or just the opposite. Business travel requires a certain level of discipline and balance as it represents a state of living, that isn't the same thing as your everyday life (unless you indeed travel every day) and stresses like flight delays can sometimes threaten to throw the balance off. I've found that all things in moderation help keep the road from getting the best of me.
The Enterprise Adapts (And That's How It Should Be) Five years ago, tablets weren't even introduced in the market and when they first arrived—they weren't seen as viable work devices. Today, it's a different story and the same goes for mobile devices of all shapes and sizes. We've moved beyond work happening on desktops and laptops, and our IT and infrastructure has had to adapt whether they wanted to or not. A lot of technology change happens in five years.
We Are A Collection of Our Experiences When we have new experiences, we grow. My biggest professional growth spurts in the past five years either happened from taking on a challenge that was a stretch from my core competencies, jumping on a project or engagement doing something I had not done before. Once we do it—whether we "succeed" or not, we learn from the experience. And learning is growing.
You Have To Make Time For Yourself The higher you move up in an organization, the more people expect you to give of yourself. Giving is a noble thing and many of the great leaders I know are generous with their time, knowledge and attention. But nobody is going to help you make the time for yourself to replenish your well. I've learned to block out some time on the calendar so I can catch my breath—on weekends, I'll huddle in my office or a coffee shop. In the past five years especially, I've learned that time is precious and should be treated as such.
Five years is half a decade—no doubt that I've still much to learn, but it's definitely more fun learning by being surrounded by great people who strive to do great things.
The Responsive Brand In A Real Time Business Environment In Edelman’s Brandshare study of 15,0000 people worldwide—we asked consumers to tell us which brand behaviours were most important to them. The number one most important behaviour indicated was a brand’s ability to respond quickly to concerns and complaints with 78% of consumers saying it’s important but only 17% feeling brands do this well. But we think a brand’s responsiveness goes beyond replying to people’s concerns and also extends into all forms of communication and engagement in a real time context.
Recently, Chevrolet took the notion of responsiveness to new levels this week, when Rikk Wilde, a representative of the brand created an instant sensation by appearing extremely nervous and somewhat awkward on camera during the MVP award portion of the ceremony. What happened next, generated a real time water cooler effect that started on social media, but quickly spread through the media landscape with news media reporting the story. What Chevrolet did next is worth paying attention to as it demonstrated an “always on” and “always ready”, response which traversed paid, owned, and earned media channels at lightening speed.
A Bold Move To Humanize The Brand In a Moment of Authentic Imperfection Immediately after the “incident”, Tweets starting flooding the Internet with “memes” being created around “#Chevyguy” and what was quickly becoming a catch phrase “technology and stuff”. The conversation reached a point where stories started popping up from media outlets ranging from Mashable to the local outlets such as the New York Post. To further complicate the buzzstorm—the truck Chevy is gave away to the World Series MVP is actively being recalled due to an issue with air bags. This was all unfolding in real time and Chevrolet was faced with a choice—do nothing or proactively play a part in the unfolding narrative. They chose the latter.
Chevrolet quickly sprang into action—displaying they had enough courage and coordination to participate in a moment highly relevant to their brand. And rather than take a straightforward defensive position, they mad a bold move—playing on the human essence of the moment, turning it into an integrated marketing campaign overnight. They started with posts on social, but then took ownership of the “Technology and Stuff” line and put it front and center of a real-time campaign which was earning media coverage but now extended to their owned properties and paid placements including a full page print ad in USA Today.
Implications For Brands & Organizations: Promote vs. Protect vs. Both The implications for brands and organizations revolve around a core question linked to an emerging context. The context is that we operate increasingly in a real time business environment. The question is when and how do we promote or protect our brands in an environment that moves in real time (for an example of where a brand did the opposite and responded too late, see Poland Spring & #Watergate”). The implications of the Chevrolet example are that it chose to do both and had the resources in place to make an impact across media. Consider that the brand didn’t only tweet text, but essentially put out a visual “ad like object” which embraced the brewing conversations. It then updated its current campaign on their Website to integrate the now infamous #technologyandstuff line and it was able to coordinate a paid placement which was printed in a major national publication—all in approximately under 48 hours.
Integrated Marketing In Real Time We’ve long encouraged brands to set up the infrastructure of a “Creative Newsroom” so they are ready and able to tap relevant and emerging trends as they happen. Chevrolet was clearly able to do this by demonstrating a high level of responsiveness which no doubt started by having their ear to the ground and listening to the conversations the second they started. They then proactively took a stance and produced content, taking ownership of the conversation—a classic principle of the Creative Newsroom construct. Then they went further and integrated a quickly moving trend as part of their marketing campaign—taking the Creative Newsroom approach even further. The implications for brands and organizations is clear—in the not so distant future the majority of brands will have resources in place to do the following:
• Monitor All Media In Real Time The team and technology that lets a brand know instantly what the conversation is around them not only from social spheres but also from media outlets.
• Create Content Instantly The ability to create compelling content (beyond text) when conversations and media attention are both at their peak. • Coordinate Media With Agility (Paid, Earned, Owned) The ability to rapidly coordinate the resources of both agency and internal who lead efforts and media budget across paid, earned and owned properties to maximize distribution.
Chevrolet was able to take an authentically awkward moment and make it part of how they are promoting and protecting their brand and their product (Chevy trucks). They had the courage to embrace human flaw, and as a result, made themselves even more relatable to consumers.
I started writing this blog back in 2006 and the namesake was completely intentional. "Logic+Emotion" symbolizes the way we've been building brands for the past sixty plus years. Marketers have always known that they have to reach people emotionally in order to capture their attention. We're emotional beings by design and often times make decisions based on how we feel. Our emotions serve as clues that explain our behaviors. We buy clothes because we need them—but the styles and brands we choose have more to do with our psycology than the basic need we must fill.
In the same breath we have brains, not just hearts. There is always a voice telling us that we need to check some boxes before making a decision. Features, benefits, specs—these are all reasons to believe the decisions we are making are right. Together, rational and emotional were the yin and yang of building brands and differentiating from competitors.
Edelman's 2014 Brandshare study, however begins to validate what many of us have already begun suspecting over the past few years—that brands aren't only built but they are preserved and must evolve along with highly empowered consumers who now make decisions with not only their hearts and brains but also their conscience. We discovered that meeting consumers rational and emotional needs are a good start—but there's a third dimension we need to now consider, and we are calling it "societal".
In fact, we looked at meeting consumers needs based across five key KPIs (Purchase, Recommend, Defend, Share Personal Info & Share Brand Content) and "Societal" actually corresponded more strongly with "Share Personal Info and Share Brand Content"—two KPIs that we think are becoming increasingly important for brands and the marketers who seek to obtain data from consumers while hoping they become a human distribution network via social, e-mail and other peer to peer channels.
Last week while discussing Brandshare findings, I could not help but recall how I myself shared a news story about how *Microsoft was sharing its cloud infrastructure as part of the effort to combat the Ebola Virus. I was doing exactly what the data above shows—sharing a brand's story that was meaningfully attaching itself to a societal issue. The same week Microsoft reported stronger than expected earnings as well. A brand that operates in the societal dimension does not equate to a brand that doesn't profit. As we've stated in Brandshare, the value exchange brands and consumers ideally have is based on mutual benefit and gain.
But our assessment is to not focus on one of the three need states over the other. When consumers needs are met rationally, emotionally and societally—a brand has the most chance of seeing a "lift" in how meeting those needs correlates to the KPIs we outline in the report. We think this is significant and if the trend continues, brands will have to take a second look at their values built meeting on emotional and rational needs and discern if and how societal fits into the core of the brand's DNA.
While Google Glass appears to be in its death throes, Google is quietly if not systematically re-inventing the digital work horse many of us have a love hate relationship with (mostly hate these days)—E-mail. I've been spending some time with Google's recently released app simply called "Inbox" and after five minutes of use the only thing that kept popping up in my head was this:
Is it possible that Google is making e-mail enjoyable again?
That's a lofty goal because right now for many of us, e-mail has become a second and third full time job. We use it so much at work that we're often exhausted by the time it comes to dealing with our "personal" e-mail. SPAM management is one of the key culprits which has also taken the joy away from e-mail. And while e-mail is ultimately mobile friendly—it can become a mammoth effort to keep it all neatly organized, while trying to ensure you didn't miss anything.
Inbox works pretty hard at all of this, organizing messages in bundles (some are already created for you such as travel, purchases forums etc.) The design is highly visual, using photos of other gmail users or abbreviations of names so you can visually keep track of threads etc. It surfaces up media elements attached to e-mails like pictures and videos so you can preview them and know what's in an e-mail before you click on it.
In short—it makes e-mail more useful, usable, desirable and shareable.
Implications For Users For the average user of digital technology, it's a great step forward in giving us a tool that we've needed for a while and optimizing it for the mobile experience. Sure it will mean that we may be toggling back and forth a little between our native e-mail program on our mobile devices, but we're already getting used to doing that with other apps. Given the time I've spent with it—I think it's designed to take on the challenges of e-mail that so many of us grapple with. It turns our inbox into more of what we are getting used to with social—a "newsfeed" in many regards.
Implications For Brands & Organizations For many organizations—having a sophisticated CRM system in place in which e-mail is already a workhorse, this is great news as the app may get Gmail users more engaged with e-mail again. But there's also the added opportunity to make e-mail more compelling—more visual and media rich and more useful. If people start coming back to e-mail again, brands and organizations will have a window of opportunity to re-capture and keep their attention.
Google Inbox may be one of the great quiet innovations of our time despite the fact that we are still intrigued by flashier trends such as wearables. A return to e-mail beyond work could translate to new opportunities for brands and organizations to provide value in the value exchange they have with their consumers, customers and people who are important to them.
I'm doing a mini tour of Texas this week having just left Austin and tomorrow I present some of our findings from Edelman's 2014 global study, Brandshare, in Dallas (full report here). The last time I talked about Brandshare, I focused on the macro theme of the report—that consumers indicated brands aren't living up to their side of the relationship when it comes to the value exchange that exists (or doesn't) with brands. The important context here is that we are talking about the relationship beyond the transactions (consumer buys product or services and "consumes"—rinse and repeat).
We tested fourteen behaviors brands could act upon as part of their relationship with consumers and surveyed fifteen thousand consumers across twelve countries to tell us what they thought was most important to them. Three key themes emerged in what they told us and for brands, it's worth taking stock on how you perform against these areas.
Responsiveness 78% of the respondents we surveyed indicated that responding quickly to concerns and complaints was important to them. In fact this was the number one most sought after behavior based on the questions we asked. And we think it goes beyond and concerns and complaints really and indicates that consumers are demanding that brands be more responsive to their needs. This could be fueled by an "on demand" mentality we are developing based on how we use technology. When we want something we can get it at the click of a button or swipe of a screen. It ma makes ense that consumers would expect brands to behave the way their technology and media does.
Involvement 68% of the respondents we s surveyed told us they think it's important for brands to communicate openly and transparently about how their products are sourced and made. They also value brands who give them many ways to ask and give opinions. In short they want to be involved. They want to know what you're doing, why you're doing it and they even want to be able to ask questions and give opinions while you're doing it. These round out the top three performing behaviors in terms of importance to behaviors. But there's more...
Conviction 58% of respondents told us that brands having a clear mission and purpose is important to them while 52% want to see brands use their resources to drive change in the world. This rounds out the top five out of the fourteen behaviors we asked consumers questions about. We interpret this as consumers seeking a real conviction from brands—a guiding "north star" which is core to how they operate. This finding if brands take to heart will act as a catalyst to re-examine their core values and determine if it makes sense to expand their remit by re-prioritizing how generous they are with their resources.
In short, they only way we can interpret the data is by evaluating the performance of the behaviors we asked consumers about. The above represent the top five base on what we asked them. It's worth noting that in each of these behaviors, brands are underperforming according to how respondents answered. From our perspective in this snapshot of time (2014) consumers are telling us that they increasingly value how quickly brands respond to their needs, how they can participate in the decisions brands make and the actions they take, and want to see brands stand for something that's true to who they are at the core.
Imagine taking a trip to New York city. As always, it's crowded and bustling but it's also a nice day. You want to get around and see the sights but the idea of waiting on a corner to land a taxi or spending a portion of your day underground don't appeal to you. You're active and enjoy finding ways to incorporate exercise in your day. You come across a bike sharing station with blue bikes and an interactive kiosk that helps you decide where you should go next. You use your credit card to obtain a bike and you're off and running, feeling a sense of empowerment that you've taken matters into your own hands and maybe even a little satisfaction that you're not contributing to the noise or other pollution as you pedal through the streets. Your needs get met, but you're also meeting the needs of the brand (*Citi) who helped put the bikes there in the first place. You've entered a value exchange with that brand whether you know it or not.
Edelman's 2014 Brandshare Study Edelman's 2014 global Brandshare study launched this past week, serving up some timely insights into the evolving relationship between consumers and brands. A comprehensive survey of 15,000 people in 12 countries about the performance of nearly 200 brands within 11industry sectors. We asked people to evaluate the importance of 14 brand behaviors and evaluate how effectively a selection of brands perform on those behaviors. The business outcomes we evaluated are: likelihood to purchase, recommend or defend a brand; propensity to share branded content with their own social networks; and willingness to share their personal data with a brand. We also queried respondents about nine consumer need states to more holistically understand the relationship between brand behaviors and the fulfillment of these needs.
There's Little Value In Today's Value Exchange Between Consumer & Brands That was the over-arching theme of the study. While brands likely feel like they are delivering value to consumers beyond the understood transactional relationship (you buy our stuff and we make sure you buy it again), the people we surveyed across the globe are indicating it's not enough. 87 percent of the respondents polled indicated they want more meaningful relationships with brands but only 17 percent feel like brands deliver. But what I thought was really interesting was a related data point which we asked the following question in connection to specific industries:
"Do brands ask for your personal information, so they can provide you something tangible in return, or for their own financial gain?"
The results to this question is underwhelming for brands across industry—in an age where brands are in need of data from the people who purchase their products and services, consumers largely feel that brands are benefitting more than they are. As the below chart shows, some industries have better footing than others in this area (food, CPG) but none are exempt from the sentiment.
Take a "brand" like Facebook (yes you can debate if it's a brand or not—I believe it is) whose business model relies almost exclusively on the data "users" provide it every time they engage with it, not to mention the jackpot of data we provide Facebook when we create a profile. We can debate how we feel about how Facebook's intent for that data, but there's little debate about the value exchange in using Facebook every day to connect with friends and business associates and its value as a newsfeed. Every day we log onto Facebook is a validation for the "brand" that there's value in the value exchange that exists between it and us.
There were many more insights in the study that span from what consumers value most and least and how their needs are met not only from an emotional and rational perspective, but also from a societal lens as well. I'll be writing more about that in the days and weeks to come. For now, the report can be found here:
In the early days of social media, when Facebook was still for college kids—Twitter seemed like an utterly useless fad to most people. But I was really intrigued by it and stuck with it and connected with others, ultimately building an audience and a real time stream I could dip in and out of whenever I wanted to.
That was 2007. Fast forward to 2014 and it's not Twitter my network is talking about—it's "Ello", a social network built on the promise that it won't touch your data nor will it ever give in to advertising. Its manifesto is posted in plain sight on the network.
"Your social network is owned by advertisers.
Every post you share, every friend you make, and every link you follow is tracked, recorded, and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.
We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity, and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.
We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life.
You are not a product."
Having spent a portion of my morning on the network—I am not convinced. Where Ello seems to be missing the point is that they may not have included enough value as part of their "value exchange" for participants to stay committed to it. Privacy is not enough—for a network to break through today you've got to make it cool, useful, usable and desirable (and "ello"—mobile).
I'm not sure Ello is delivering any at this point. It doesn't come off as particularly elegant—I found it hard to even figure out how to post and there wasn't enough value for me to overcome this. I get better content by exploring current networks vs. what I've seen so far on Ello.
So what does Ello have?
It's got FOMO in spades (Fear Of Missing Out). For a short time and for reasons only they know—it's got enough of the right people talking about it and asking for invitations (like I did).
So what doesn't Ello have yet?
It's got media coverage building some hype—but I've already seen negative word of mouth, (WOM) even when I asked for an invite. Perhaps you can count this post as negative word of mouth as well though I will suspend complete judgement...however, at this time—I'm not seeing the value or it just might not be for me.
But it did get me thinking about what causes people to take action. FOMO is powerful—I was able to secure an invite, create a profile and kick some tires. WOM is pretty powerful too—I have yet to see peers telling me they love it. Right now there's a collective "WTF?" as many try to make sense of it.
I also learned a lesson from my early days on Twitter—sometimes something great is not immediately recognizable in the world of social media. But sometimes you just have to go with your gut as well, and my gut says that value exchange trumps privacy and commercialism. Right now Ello is light on providing enough value to make it a serious ad free alternative to anything.
Like millions of others, I recently filled a bucket full of ice and water, shot a video and called on a few friends to do the same. While not required to, I also donated to the ALS association because it seemed like the right thing to do. Is the infamous "Ice Bucket Challenge" working? According to the New York Times, the campaign has raised over 13 million dollars compared to the 1.7 million raised last year at this time. So is there a down side? According to my social feeds—kind of. While I don't agree with them, here's a snapshot of some of the feedback I've seen in addition to the participation. Perhaps you've seen some too:
The Narcissist Police This person is quick to point out that anyone taking the challenge on is simply enjoying the attention and in it for themselves vs. the cause. They feel obligated to point this out, before they move on to posting another selfie of themselves.
The Hard Newser Isn't there enough real news going on the world we should be paying attention to? This person overlooks the fact that part of the success behind the Ice Bucket challenge is probably linked to the fatigue associated with watching the world's problems escalate. Who doesn't want a break from non stop reports of global violence and unrest?
The Financial Advisor This financial weekend warrior is quick to point out that all of those people pouring ice cold water on their heads are missing out on the financial part of the equation and should part ways with money that the "advisor" has no viable claim to. The advisor conveniently overlooks the fact that many who take on the challenge go on to donate themselves or inspire others to take action but instead places their financial advisor role first.
The Meme Hipster Ice Bucket Challenge? That's so last week. This person can't stand the idea of jumping on a bandwagon and instead is focused on getting on the next trend before it takes off. Godspeed meme hipster—keep your finely tuned ear to the ground.
The Marketer This person won't actually take the challenge or support the cause, but instead prefers to debate the pros and cons of the campaign, dissecting the approach and debating with other peers if it's a case study or one hit wonder.
The Ice Bucket Challenge has taken the world by storm and leveraged social media as an engine which keeps it running across all media. But above that—it's an opportunity to take a break from putting yourself first. Personally—I'll take the opportunity.
I know Justin, but in a world of having many connections, "knowing" someone doesn't mean much, and Justin and I don't talk every day—in fact we've have had only a handful of interactions.
But a status update on social media caught my attention and hasn't lost it since. Recently, Justin posted the following:
And since then, he's undergone one of several surgeries for his shoulders which were both badly injured due to the violent nature of the seizure. To make matters even more unnerving, a brain tumor has been found and he's scheduled to have the majority of it removed.
I don't post this kind of thing often here, but there are a few aspects about this that are moving me to act. For starters, just reading the post made me concerned—healthy people don't have seizures out of the blue, it's a sign that something is wrong (there is). Secondly, it hits home when you see anyone who is a picture of health one moment and the next is struggling with some serious health related problems. Third, (and I cannot stress this enough) the way Justin has been providing updates to friends and family via Facebook is really something to marvel at. He's keeping us all informed while working really hard to keep it all together.
In a world where it's really easy to put ourselves in the center of our universe and wallow when things go wrong, Justin is an example of what strength can look like, should we choose to endure life's hardships in a way that's both human but also resilient.
So I'm taking a step to join the team to help raise some funds for Justin. I'll likely donate to another team member as well. With brain surgery in play, nobody knows for sure what the road to recovery will look like for Justin. If you'd like to help someone you may not even know, this is a good opportunity to do so.
We needn't look much further than our everyday lives to realize that the way we consume, share and produce our own media has changed drastically. The major forces in this evolution are largely a combination of hardware and software (mobile) combined with connectivity (social) all accelerated in the context of time which gives the impression of immediacy (real-time). When it comes to marketing and communications in this real time business environment it is forcing us to re-think the notion of both content and distribution.
It was these thoughts that have been driving much of my own thinking (and doing) in the space and recently I gave a talk in Montenegro to attempt to string much of this together in a presentation. Yes, we're steadily transitioning from an era where messages would be the primary focus of the marketing world—to a future where storytelling (custom tailored for the media it is delivered in) pulls people into the narrative. We've gone from push to pull to pull and distribute where "news feeds" of all shapes and sizes become a primary way we inform ourselves. Below is an expanded version of the presentation I gave at Spark.me along with a few specific points I called out:
Real-time Marketing Is A Tactic, Not a Strategy As I've stated before, it's time to re-think real-time especially in the context of marketing. We've reduce it to a set of tactics but in reality the notion of being more agile in a fast moving environment means that all operations within marketing (and beyond) will eventually have to evolve to something that can be more adaptive to changes as they happen. So if real-time marketing is the thing that introduces change into our organizations—so be it. But it cannot be the strategy that drives that change.
Content Marketing—Beyond Social (The Five Content Archetypes) We're at a pivotal shift in our business where much of the momentum we benefitted from in social is now shifting and expanding around "content". Which means we need a more holistic way think about content as it pertains to our strategies and tactics. I've introduced the "The Five Content Archetypes" as a straight forward way to categorize content in areas which included owned properties such as Websites and apps. This can also be a tool for us as clients come to us with content problems/opportunities which need solutions.
Content As Currency This is a way to think/speak about content which takes social behavior into account. Many marketers want to view content as "king" or "queen" which is looking at it from our business perch. If we look at it from the "content consumer" point of view we lead with the insight that people today treat content as a form of currency which helps them build reputations etc. This translates to brand reputation as well which is increasingly becoming a blurred line which the consumer does not distinguish.
Social + Search + Content = Visibility and Viability A simple formula to think about how search, social, and content are all playing complimentary roles to what we see and share with others. Visibility equates to the most relevant content bubbling up to the top when we search for it and viability pertains to the disposition content has to be shared.
All thoughts I've started some time ago and are constantly evolving as I collect my own data points both from an industry perspective and personal experience.
You've probably done it too. Shared an article you didn't fully read or absorb because the headline grabbed your attention. If you're guilty as charged—don't feel too bad as there is a legitimate reason we sometimes do this. As I've said many times before, content is currency and it's human nature to want to share things that resonate with us and we know will resonate with others.
I did this recently with a Business Insider article titled:
So here's what I did; I read the headline and visually skimmed the article. Note that I said "visually skimmed"—which means a few key phrases popped out, but I didn't read or digest it. But I did share it along with snarky quip that read:
"Cue the beginning of the end of social media marketing"
So do I really think it's the end of social media marketing? No, but the headline got me thinking that if it takes so long to craft and perfect a single tweet—we need to examine what we are all trying to do here. The only problem is that when you read the article in full—while it does technically make the case that a tweet was planned well in advance, the context illustrates that it was part of a pre planned content calendar—a common practice in marketing.
It was a colleague's comments on the subject that got me thinking about thinking twice in regards to how we share, as well as operating within the reality that attention grabbing headlines are likely not going away. I have two take-aways from this:
1. Content Is Currency—Spend It Wisely Would I have shared the same article? Yes—it's of interest to myself and my peers. What I would have done differently is bookmarked it for a time where I could have read and thought about the content before sharing it with a snarky take away. I would have probably shared it posing a question like "can planned content be less time consuming" or asking others if they have had similar experiences.
2. Be Ready For Anything The agency featured in the piece (Huge) didn't just sit around letting the headline of the piece speak for them—they spoke up.
Net net, it's on us as individuals to think through what and how we share to ensure the maximum value of the currency of content and it's on all brands and organizations to be responsive in any scenario, or be defined by the narrative others draft for you.
"To improve is to change; to perfect is to change often" ~Winston Churchill
There are few documents, articles or any media for that matter that capture and illustrate the complex yet efficient nature of disruption than the New York Times 2014 Innovation Report. Recently leaked, presumably in some connection with the dismissal of executive editor Jill Abramson the 91 page report has been somewhat eclipsed by the debate around Abramson. But while that story has been garnering the most attention in the media—it is the innovation report which needs to be read cover to cover by anyone whose work includes a digital media component.
Scratch that—anyone who works should read it. And you have no excuse—I'll make it easy for you. You can download the PDF from here. Print it out or save it to your iPad/tablet but just READ IT. After spending a few hours with it myself over an evening, my conclusion was that the document, while not earth shattering in the recognition of disruption nor the recommendations to combat it—it paints an eerily detailed portrait of an entrenched organization struggling with itself to adapt, change and succeed in a world that no longer recognizes the New York Times as king of the hill. If you read between the lines as you digest the information, it is astonishingly insightful.
I don't think I can do the entire document justice, but I'm going to try to capture a few reoccurring themes that stood out for me. I'll also include quotes from the report—but again, please do yourself a favor and make the time to read it yourself.
Agility Page 32: "Launch efforts quickly, then iterate. We often hold back stories for publication, as we should, because they're "not quite there yet"...we can adopt a more basic form so that we start getting feedback from users and improve it over time"
Agility in some form or another is a constant theme in the report surfacing as a response to the reason it was being championed; disruption. In fact the entire report is essentially a response to the disruption from competitors who move quickly and seem to have an intuitive understanding of customer media behaviors from mobile to social and beyond. The notion of agility highlights initiatives such as Snow Fall but also promotes a systematic approach to both experimentation and innovation highlighting setting goals and tracking progress.
Culture Page 38: "At The Times, we generally like to let our wok speak for itself. We're not ones to brag. Our competitors have no such qualms, and many are doing a better job of getting their journalism in front of new readers through aggressive story promotion".
I could not help but feel the tension in culture in nearly every page of the report. Old vs. new, editorial standards vs. attention grabbing techniques, silos vs. open collaboration—you could almost feel the palpable struggle of an established organization grappling with itself. One of the areas where you could feel culture at play was in the section where the report discusses "connection" and puts forth the idea that journalists like Nick Kristof, David Carr and Charles Duhigg—all journalists who promote their own work are doing it right and these skills can be taught. it remains to be seen if the organization can stomach a small army of staff who have built personal brands at scale and leverage them for mutual benefit. Ultimately the document evangelizes a "digital first" movement to be embraced in all corners of the organization, de-emphasizing the front page, print and other hold outs from a previous era. Some would question if it's too late—but that's where the report is rooted.
Customer Centricity Page 60: "The many business-side development and roles which we refer to as "Reader Experience" throughout this report —need to work more closely with the newsroom instead of being kept at arm's length."
I debated on elevating this, but I think it's a macro theme in the report and it's not unusual for any organization, especially a large one that has enjoyed dominance in market for a time to lose sight of how their customers think, act and behave as it relates to the world you have in common. There are numerous areas in the report that reference how the NYT's competition have seemingly mastered timeliness, relevance or features which media consumers can't get enough of. The report also goes into some detail about the silos the organization needs to work through as an impediment to serving the modern needs of customers. it seems elementary, but there's enough evidence to support a concerted effort to make "Reader Experience" a top priority.
Talent Page 88: "I looked around the organization and saw the plum jobs—even the ones with explicitly digital mandates—going to people with little experience in digital. Meanwhile, journalists with excellent digital credentials were stuck moving stories around on section fronts"
There were numerous references to the type of talent The Times had at their disposal from analysts to design to technology, product, R&D and more but it wasn't toward the end that you got the sense that there was a struggle to ensure that the right talent was retained. Digital talent by definition can be fickle, impatient and drawn to emerging trends (as digital media typically is always evolving)—but you got a sense from the report that there was a concern for today's departures becoming tomorrow's competitors.
Summary: Disruption Happens The NYT Innovation Report provides a glimpse into an industry under tremendous pressure and illustrates what it looks and feels like for a large, established organization with a rich heritage to come to terms with a world that looks very different than it did when tried and true formulas worked. It should be required reading for any executive or professional whose job it is to make sure their business is resilient enough to thrive in spite of change. In short, being an entrenched organization or a business resistant to change is no longer a viable strategy.
You should stop what you are doing and read this piece on Native Advertising by Andrew Sullivan, in which he asserts "journalism has surrendered" on the topic of native advertising. Specifically the form that seamlessly blends marketing with editorial in a publication. Aside from it being a wonderful and brutally honest assessment of native advertising and its influence on media, Andrew is both right and wrong in the piece when he says this:
"At one point, the reputation of that journalism is going to tarnished by the fact that you’re not sure if it’s done out of a commercial interest. I have to say I don’t think it’s sustainable. It will collapse when the readers figure it out. It should have been front-page news that Time magazine reporters were to begin reporting to the business side."
What Andrew gets right (maybe) is that the reputation of journalism is going to get tarnished. But we have to ask ourselves for who will it really matter? It will matter to the highly informed—the one percent of media consumers you could say. To the others, we must get a reality check and really digest what's happening in the world of media consumption for the average person. There are a few forces at play:
Time: There's a finite amount of time we have and it's increasingly being chipped away by technology and a surplus of media stimulus. We simply don't have enough of it.
Attention: Sorry, but most of us can now be clinically diagnosed with ADD. Maybe we weren't born with it—but again, technology has taken its toll. We have so much information coming at us, it's increasingly difficult to focus. Watching a two minute video on YouTube now seems like a massive commitment.
Relevancy: Blame social media. We are all so consumed in our own worlds that if media/news doesn't seem relevant to us—we ignore it.
Currency: I've said it a million times. Content is currency. Ignore this sociological reality at your own peril—people now use content as a way to build their reputations and credibility with peers.
Status: It's what comes after currency. Share the best content that your peers and friends value—see your social status rise.
Mobility: If your content can't be consumed or shared via mobile—don't even bother. Our context for media consumption is now "on the go".
Snackability: We've been trained to "snack" on media all day long. It's becoming harder to carve out time for media meals which can't be consumed quickly. Do you have teens? Watch their media consumption behaviors.
In short, we are the reason native advertising exists. We're the reason cat videos on YouTube are popular. We're the reason that in depth journalism is becoming an endangered species. On that note—I'll end here before I hit 500 words. Because you won't read more.
Recently, I attended an industry roundtable alongside a variety of marketers from different industries, all on the brand side. These are smart and accomplished individuals who gathered together to discuss real time marketing and what it means for their organizations. When asked what their favorite example of real time marketing was—most deferred to the obvious answer: Oreo's "dunk in the dark!" With much respect to the brand that got the real time conversation started—it's time to move on.
From Real Time Marketing to Building Responsive Brands Real-time marketing is indeed a real thing, but we're going to have to stop chasing our own version of the Oreo moment if we're going to make progress in this area. First we have to really get our heads wrapped around the foundation to understand what we're actually trying to do—and what we're trying to do is build brands differently. We essentially have two tools at our disposal: content and engagement. This is where many of us miss the mark. We underestimate how difficult it is to use these tools. A recent article featuring Coke's content efforts underscores how arduous a task it is for a brand and organization to create, curate and publish a regular stream of valuable content. In the race to real-time, we've over simplified this. Secondly—when, how, why and how often a brand engages has become an art and science. The NYPD learned this lesson the hard way when they wanted to simply promote their cause.
Re-Thinking Our Core Teams Before we go any further down the rabbit hole of real time marketing, we must take into account that the core team needed to actually take on the role of planning & producing content as well as partnering with third parties and coordinating media purchases looks a little differently than the traditional core teams whether it's an advertising model or other. Editorial sensibilities must be combined with creative instincts and craft. Social aptitude must be core to engagement strategies and tactics. Media spend is increasingly becoming difficult to separate out as it becomes part of the content strategy and analytics must be more agile than ever.
Enter The Content Strategist Content strategy or content marketing for that matter isn't new—but there aren't exactly thousands of content strategists with years of experience under their belts sitting around waiting to take their rightful position as key member of today's responsive brand building team. Content strategists will also look differently from how they may have operated in the past with a holistic view of the way content can live, breath and flow across paid, owned, earned and shared properties and media. They will need to partner closely with media counterparts and be intimately involved in the connections planning.
Having put this thinking forward—there's much to be said about in regards to culture, talent and pure ingenuity. When it was my turn to say what my favorite example of "real time marketing was", I gave a recent client example because I was close to it. If I had the chance to answer again—I would have said Honey Maid. Take a look—now that's a responsive brand.
Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. ~Mark Twain.
This isn't a post about social business—it's about doing business in a connected age, and this is an important distinction. Let me take a step back for a moment. In April 2009, exactly five years ago I took a chance and joined a start up that didn't have a name at the time and only a handful of employees. That start-up ended up being called Dachis Group, which was recently acquired by SaaS platform Sprinklr. There was a single reason I joined the emerging organization in pre-infancy. Jeff Dachis, who co-founded Razorfish—one of the original digital agencies said the following sequence of words which I had never heard before, and deeply resonated with me.
Social Business Design
While my time with the start-up was brief, I never wavered from the belief that was core to what social business stood for. Everything had changed, and while we were a handful of true believers at the time, we all instinctively knew that the way business functioned was going to be impacted for the years to come. Now fast-forward five years later...
I touch a lot of clients and initiatives and our engagements can range from producing a regular and relevant stream of content for our client's brands to working side by side with them to figure out the infrastructure needed to support different forms of engagement with a variety of stakeholders. I had been spending some time recently on our beta version of "Dairy Hub"—one of the latest manifestations of evolution we've undertaken with our willing parters of the US dairy industry and it dawned upon me this is just scratching the surface of what we used to call social business. And looking forward, it's simply how all business will operate in one way or another (many are well on their way).
However, the "Dairy Hub" alone isn't social business—it's one of many initiatives which were driven by a strategy and vision to bring the industry together and create value for a variety of stakeholders. The real story behind the the evolution had more to do with how we collaborated with the CEO of DMI and his team and aligning their efforts as well as ours over the years. It's the heavy lifting stuff you don't always hear about but is always necessary for real change to occur. It takes years.
More on Dairy another time—back to doing business in a connected age. Below are a few areas which are highly relevant to how business needs to continue to change moving forward. They are how...
The Cloud Connects Us Cloud technologies are eliminating the need for consumers and enterprises to store massive amounts of data by themselves through offering up an infrastructure which allows businesses to set up shop virtually overnight and empowers data sharing like we've never seen before. It's also potentially a security nightmare.
Content Connects Us As advertising becomes gradually easier to ignore or skip—brands are under pressure to leverage all forms of content which either educate, inform or entertain us. Never have brands had to work so hard to get their target audience to pay attention to them.
Mobility Connects Us Pay close attention to Facebook's strategy of unbundling the Facebook experience into an ecosystem of mobile first experiences. Mobility is on it's way to becoming the dominant way people interact with technology. Facebook understands this, having learned the hard way originally putting the desktop experience before mobile.
Sharing Connects Us It's been described as the sharing or collaborative economy, but it's yet another way that connecting is changing the face of how we want to exchange goods and services. E-commerce allowed us to buy new or used—now we can connect to those who can help us get our needs met perhaps without actually buying anything.
The thing that's driving massive change in organizations today is the fact that we've become connected in a number of ways that haven't existed in the past. It's bigger than social. It's bigger than mobile. It's bigger than wearables. And it will take years to work through as connections empower individuals across the board.
It's been exactly a week since I returned from SXSW. I would have written something sooner, but this delayed post is a great representation of where things stand in life for me these days. Writing for "personal" purpose takes a second seat to direct business building and running which is ironic because that was kind of the vibe at SXSW Interactive and that's not a bad thing.
Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of parties at SXSW and a lot of late nights and some blowing off steam. As always, the panels are hit and miss, but even the misses can still be good for business. I attended a session that was essentially an ad for the mobile start-up whose CEO was giving a talk. However, his start-up was solid in premise and I'd heard about it before. And it's on my radar and now I'll be looking for strategic partnership opportunities around it.
It's been my sixth year going to SXSW. Here's how I spent my time:
Client Meetings & Events Regardless of your business (platform, brand or agency side) SXSW is a great way to connect and engage with clients. In addition to dinners and One-on-ones, this year I co-hosted an intimate salon with Jeremiah Owyang in Edelman's Austin office where brands such as Samsung, PayPal, Kellogg's and others traded case studies and engaged in meaningful dialogue around the work they were doing and the challenges/opportunities they were engaging with. And we weren't the only ones hosting private client events—a quick chat with an Adweek reporter verified that it was kind of a "thing" this year.
One On Ones In order to make SXSW productive in any sense, you shouldn't go there without scheduling one-on-ones in advance. I had some great conversations with industry peers, some who were running really cool activations at SXSW, to emerging start-ups and the occasional conversation that turned into a more in depth meeting. SXSW is noisy, so finding some quiet places to talk shop is a great use of time.
Brand Activations There's a lot of brand activity going on at SXSW and it's impossible to catch it all but worth seeing what the brands are doing. Oreo's 3-D printed cookies were hard to miss and Mastercard's partnership with the Mashable house was an interesting tactic compared to American Express who paid for a more traditional sponsorship. Meanwhile PayPal (client) hosted web celebrities and celebrities alike at their blogger lounge.
Parties Yes, these still happen too. But like I said, this is my sixth year at SXSW—so parties are now part fun and a whole lot of networking, meeting and greeting and re-connecting with industry friends and colleagues. Parties are great for informal recruiting and in more simple terms—putting faces to names.
For what it's worth—this year SXSW seemed a little smaller (confirmed)—but I noticed that the trend of more senior people attending is still on the rise. During one lunch with an editor of a large publication, I looked over and saw a table full of top executives from a leading digital agency—right up to the CEO. And this wasn't an isolated case. SXSW = big business now, so if you haven't yet gone you might want to adjust your expectations and book on time because it's not getting any easier to attend.
“Real-time marketing”—just uttering the phrase evokes images of hastily photo-shopped images and ham fisted attempts to join online conversations. The stakes can be high—last week’s big winner in the responsive category during the Grammys was of course Arby’s to which the spoils of considerable earned media coverage and over 6000 new Twitter followers were awarded. Many other brands weren’t as fortunate.
But for all the hype and baggage associated with real-time marketing, it doesn’t seem to be going away. Perhaps that’s because real-time marketing is already on its way to simply evolving into a modern day extension of integrated marketing. Think about the dollars spent by advertisers on premium venues like the Superbowl—can they afford to sit out integration in not only digital spaces, but also social second screen activity? (Just watch how many people will be on mobile devices at your party).
No, they can’t.
And so, this year’s Superbowl will be a moment of truth for what brands do in the social- mobile space before, during and after the big game. Budweiser for example has already been encouraging consumers to post pictures of themselves and their four legged friends using the #Bestbuds hash tag as a compliment to their campaign. They also have @Budweiserpuppy talking to people on Twitter. In similar Fashion Chobani brought their 30-second star to life on Twitter in the form of @Chobani_bear who started doing real-time video responses on Twitter, most recently with Katy Perry. Mysteriously, the Chobani Bear Twitter account has recently been suspended—a real-time marketing mishap?
* Update, Chobani contacted me an informed me that @Chobani_bear was not a Chobani account.
Whether you are on brand or agency side, at minimum you should be watching this space and learning. Mobile will only continue to chip away consumer's attention away from the “first screen” and while many brands are still learning the ropes of responsive marketing integration, it’s a sure bet that this will become part of the modern marketing mix. On that note, there are a couple of simple ways you can watch and learn: A public Twitter list of all brands advertising on the Superbowl was published by Marketing Land, and I’ve also created a hashtag for marketers to follow examples (#RTMBowl). What brands will win? It’s anyone’s game.
It's not easy to determine which trends and movements are worth paying attention to. We live in an age where technology seems to move at pace that's impossible to keep up with. I spend a lot of my time dealing with global brands who are looking to scale and integrate social as part of their core marketing—and in some cases business strategies, and I can tell you first hand that these organizations have their work cut out for them as we are now in the trenches of operationalizing the disruptions caused by digital's latest iteration.
When my friend Jeremiah Owyang first briefed me on what he was doing around what he likes to call "The Collaborative Economy" (some call it the share economy), I was pressed to see the immediate impact on my day to day responsibilities as I work with these organizations. Gradually, I began to see the importance of the movement. I'm sure many of you reading this now use Uber to get around your area or when you travel—it's a new-ish model which relies partially on individuals and their personal vehicles which become part of the Uber system (and it's a fantastic customer experience) and of course there's the Air BnB's of the world and anything with the word "crowd" in it.
But the lights really went on for me when I watched this video of a boy born without a hand and his father who was determined to help him. The video which I highly recommend watching calls out a few specific factors which are signature attributes of the collaborative economy. Individuals who have never met in real life (makers), collaborating over the Web to create a simple but effective prosthetic which can grasp items—a father who finds them and then obtains the directions (for free) and buys a 3D printer to "print" the pieces which he then assembles.
This example hits me on two levels. As a father, I can relate to searching for and finding an unconventional solution to help his kid out. And from a business perspective, I can't help but marvel at how disruptive this is. The solution detailed above cost but a fraction of what a traditional prosthetic would have and it allows the family to "print" upgraded designs as they are made available. This is good news for dads and sons (and anyone in a similar situation) and perhaps less good news for companies who make very expensive prosthetics. This is one of the many stories that signal the emergence of the collaborative economy.
Jeremiah Owyang is announcing the official launch of his new venture "Crowd Companies" at LeWeb in Paris. I'd encourage keeping a close eye on what he's covering and following related developments like the one in this story. When you work for a large organization that's been very successful for a long time, it's natural to feel like you only have to worry about your direct competitors. But the Collaborative Economy competes in a different way, inventing entirely new models and disrupting rather than competing directly. It's worth paying attention to both as a consumer and business leader.
Today, the talk of the town amongst marketers is the potential for brands to act as publishers and media companies, going direct to their customers or consumers in the fight to earn attention. It's a lofty ambition but worth pursuing as there are three drivers changing how we spend our time and attention.
1. Mobile Increasingly, we are getting our information from the smaller screen. It's always on us—it's portable and connected to the Web. It plays video and all other sorts of media and apps have transformed how we interact with it.
2. Social Specifically newsfeeds. In addition to e-mail, we increasingly get our information in a newsfeed format (arguably e-mail was the original mobile newsfeed). Today it's Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, Twitter... the list goes on. What each one of these has in common is that it's dominated by content and sharing is only a button tap or click away.
3. Search Google continues to tweak its algorithm to favor quality content vs. redundant links and phrases which try to trick it. Because of this, it favors quality over quanity and becomes more difficult to game.
The first wave of social was dominated by engagement and how to engage at scale. The second is dominated by engaging at scale plus content distribution and integration with marketing programs. To fully realize the promise of brands as media companies—we must first understand and classify content. There are five ways I've been thinking about content:
Curated Media companies have always curated the best information available and customized this for the audiences they want to grow and keep. For brands, it's no different and is one of the most practical places to start. Take IBM's Smarter Planet Tumblr for example which curates some of the most interesting stories around intelligent technology. By doing this, the brand becomes an authority on the topic.
Co-Created The biggest mistake I often see brands make when thinking about content is to forget that even content can be a participatory experience. In contrast, take AMC's Dead Yourself app which combines the aforementioned game changers (mobile + social) and empowers fans to zombify any picture they can capture on their mobile phone. Where does the content end up? Social newsfeeds. Take that display ads.
Original Brands now have the opportunity to create original content that is own-able and can't be found anywhere else. This requires a great deal of planning as the content needs to be naturally connected to the brand. Original branded content can be useful or entertaining or both (see *Skylanders Boomcast). It can also be done in a semi journalist tone. We recently worked with Kellogg's on this type of "Brand Journalism" as part of their Olympics sponsorship. In this example the brand is part of the story but does not play the leading role.
Consumer Generated Personal publishing which arguably came before brand publishing has empowered millions of people to post an infinite amount of content into the digital realm. Consumer generated media rivals that of media created by the professionals and when tapped appropriately can authentically reinforce what a brand stands for. A recent example that I really like is what Disney is doing with their consumer generated content contest, Disney Side.
Sponsored Likely the most hotly debated form of content, sponsored content also goes by the name "native advertising" or specific to social, promoted posts. Simply put, there are three versions of sponsored—the traditional version (like display ads) or paid options from digital platforms like Facebook or Twitter and sponsored editorial working with a media company ranging from Buzzfeed to the Atlantic.
It's time to move the "brand as media" discussion into more actionable territory. As attention shifts to newsfeeds and mobile streams—the stories we tell there need to be all the more compelling.
Recently had the opportunity to share some thoughts about the "Agency of tomorrow" with the ever resourceful Chuck Kent as part of an interview on Branding Magazine. Excerpt below. Oh, and I have a new job at Edelman. More at PR Week. Happy Friday!
BM: Do you see the opportunity, the need for you to be able to – or any part of Edelman – to be able to initiate a core idea?
DA: I think that’s what’s in play. Not in this example, but in another example we – my team working with some other partners – are working on specific assignments where we’re doing just that role. And I will say that we have a few stakeholders on the client side that believe in it, they believe in, “Ideas are going to come from, well, it doesn’t really matter.”
We work in what I call a more responsive model. We’re not working in linear broadcast, we’re working in these content cycles. You might have a campaign that takes from inception to spreading out six months. We’ll work sometimes in a one month or two month cycle…. What I’ve seen in that situation is that the person who’s acting as CMO in this case believes in that model and is empowering us to do it. But yes… the preconceived notions are still there.
Right now there are conversations being had to say “Look, this other model is at play and nobody really owns it so we’re just going to give the business to people who work in that way. And all that means, just to expand on that, is that I all think that means is that pie gets dispersed a little bit more. At the end of the day, it’s got to be about where the client needs to be relevant.
History has a way of repeating itself. I still remember the heady days of the original digital agencies. They were built on the market demand for Websites ranging from the complex transactional to the marketing microsite. The smart agencies however knew that they had to diversify by bringing in "traditional" talent in the form of planners, art directors and copywriters. These new additions to "digital" teams often times didn't even know how to code, push a pixel and many were not considered digital. But they knew how to tell a story.
Today, even the most talented art directors and writers aren't enough. Neither are the social-savvy digital types. Alone, they may be able to push their craft—but working together surrounded by planning and analytics they can operate as the heart of the creative engine behind any campaign. A few thoughts about how these roles should operate:
Art Directors Today's art directors as always should be able to drive a concept and bring it to life. Ideally, in a digital world they possess a healthy amount of interaction design sensibility meaning they can think not only in "ads" but also in experience. It's a rare combination but not impossible to find. Some can even code.
Copywriters Able to use harness written word in all its forms whether it be in headline, script, or crafting the big idea into tangible communication—copywriters are also drivers of the concepts. Today's copywriters articulate concepts and when it comes to the craft of writing for an audience understand the difference in medium (television, print, web, mobile).
Social Engineers The least traditional of the three—this role focuses on the social viability of the creative. Social engineers can come from backgrounds like community management or social strategy and know instinctively what levers to pull in social spaces to ensure an idea has legs there and does more than translates but is social-centric at the core.
Madison avenue creative was built on the legendary relationships and teamwork of art directors and copywriters. Much of that chemistry is still relevant today, when it comes to great creative. Add in a "social engineer" to the evolved version of those two disciplines—and watch the magic happen.
Social media has been good to me. It's re-defined my career, opened new doors and enabled me to make connections that would have been impossible had the Web not gotten connected. I started blogging in 2006 and in less than a year found myself in the pages of BusinessWeek. From there things only got more interesting, not only for me personally but for the business world at large. One by one, brands, organizations and even governments had to come to terms with the connected Web and subsequently the rapid evolution of mobile. It all makes me wonder what's next—and I've been thinking a lot about it. Here are a few not so random thoughts. Many of them fall under the lens of marketing and communications, where I spend a lot of my professional time. Consider it thinking aloud:
Social Increasingly Becomes a Paid Game The early days of social under the broader context of the marketing function was organic by nature. Facebook, Twitter etc. weren't even thinking of monetization models—for them it was about building an audience around the platforms. Today, it's increasingly difficult to reach an audience through your social channels without leveraging a paid component.
Content Isn't Enough Anymore The problem with content is that it can be anything. Text. Photos. Video. It's not enough. People don't share content but they do share stories which resonate with them and their friends/connections. Telling really good stories is hard. Today, we have to be able to do it in a single Instagram sized image and in a six second Vine. We also need to be able to make marketing feel like something bigger—something with a larger purpose. It's the reason we see Dove and Guinness and instantly want to share the story. This is not content—it's a narrative. Narrative which stops us in our tracks and breaks through the noise to earn our attention.
Integrated Marketing Becomes Mandatory One of the stories I love to tell about Oreo is how they launched Instagram. "Dunk In The Dark" is a diversion—a one hit wonder, but Oreo is a masterful integrated marketer and incorporated social and digital into their Superbowl advertising, leveraging paid dollars and creativity to build a sizable audience on Instagram literally overnight. Why this story doesn't get told more is beyond me. Smart integrated marketing is the future, while social one hit wonders will become a thing of the past.
Art Director + Copywriter + Social Engineer: The Creative Team of Tomorrow As someone who works in the "Public Relations" industry, I can reflect upon how we were quick to hire social savvy individuals who knew how to manage and grow communities. Now we hire creatives and planners who must figure out how to partner with these social savvy individuals. Madison avenue was built on the duo of art directors and and copywriters. Tomorrow's creative team will be a trio at the core (and don't forget analytics).
ROI Becomes An Efficiency Play The early days of social revolved around proving out a specific ROI (did you sell more X?) for example. But in the maturation phase that we are in today—under a marketing lens, it becomes about proving out that metrics like reach and impressions were achieved at a cost reduction, or even better, cost reduction combined with qualitative benefits like better targeting (did you reach the right people?).
Yesterday's disruption was digital. It created a new economic model and dominant players (Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.). Social came next followed by the infusion of mobile—we consume information and participate on demand, anytime, anywhere. But none of these things can be viewed in isolation. I've talked about the responsive marketing model recently and some even talk about the responsive organization. Even marketing in an iterative and more agile fashion has to be a connected part of a bigger machine. I believe what comes after social looks more like the aggregate of many pieces vs. the single view of one or two which have dominated the industry discourse for years. It's time to elevate the role of digital, social and mobile as core elements of a bigger, complex and integrated machine.
In the beginning, there were products and services, and some were good. Fewer became trusted brands, but those that did enjoyed unquestioned loyalty supported by a simple yet effective marketing engines built to reach people in mass quantity. The formula worked for decades. An empire was built on the shoulders of Madison Avenue and expanded globally. It is an empire, which still exists today, though arguably it’s a diminished version of its former self.
More recently, technology has had it’s own evolutionary process which it’s still going through. Well over a decade ago, when large organizations developed and updated their complex Web properties, the most popular and rigorous process one could follow in development was referred to as “Waterfall”. Think of this as a descending, linear staircase where one step of the process was completed in full before moving on the next. The methodology was rigorous, but also left little room for tweaking, testing, adapting and improving along the way.
Responsive Design Today, digital design and development is often done leveraging the “agile” method of development, which favors smaller, cyclical bursts of development and rapid testing. Start-ups favor this approach as well building not only their tech products but also their business models in a way, which resembles more of an agile philosophy vs. a rigid, sequential approach. Even “large” start-ups like Facebook demonstrate this in how they roll out enhancements to their global platform, often making the changes incrementally, rolling them out with select users and then adjusting based off the data they analyze. Google often works this was as well. If you were to undertake designing and building a digital property today—you would also have to ensure that it would perform across multiple platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile). A popular methodology for developing this way is called “responsive design”—a technique, which leverages code that results in a shape shifting design which auto-magically fits the medium it, is being interacted with in.
Most Marketing Remains Linear And Unresponsive Despite the pervasive nature of all manifestations of digital, including social and mobile, much of the marketing emphasis remains dedicated to reaching people in mass, following a tried and true formula for advertising designed to build off consumer insights and craft compelling messages which could be distributed across a myriad of channels (including digital). The approach is designed for the broadcast industrial machine including print, radio and television, which, despite rumors of its demise is likely to stay with us for some time. The problem it poses however is that it is an approach that much like its counterpart in tech development, (Waterfall) is neither nimble nor flexible and isn’t built for rapid change nor does it adapt well beyond the dominant media it was designed for.
“Content Marketing” Is Disrupting Modern Day Brand Building CMOs, chief digital officers and brand managers across many organizations are currently grappling with the notion of content used in the context of marketing—inherently they understand that their customers value content, consume it, create it, and share it—and they want in on the action. They also understand that this type of content isn’t often the traditional campaigns they execute for broadcast so they face a dilemma:
What content do consumers value most?
How do they find it?
What gets individuals sharing content with peers?
How does content scale, reaching the right audience at the right time?
How do brands insert themselves into the content ecosystem in ways that bring value back to the brand?
Responsive Marketing The solution to the content question lies somewhere between acknowledging that a brand must support both a traditional, linear marketing model in addition to a newer, cyclical construct which is constantly in tune with the current environment and operates in consolidated time frames. Responsive marketing sits at the core of the content evolution that many companies find themselves trying to navigate as they pull together newsrooms, command centers and media operations which are designed to help brands act more like publishers. All of these can be effective in treating the symptoms a brand may exhibit if they possess only competencies in linear forms of marketing, but they do not address the root issue—deconstructing a marketing machine which places the majority of resources on mass marketing will ensure it never gains proficiency in alternate forms of content and media.
A more holistic approach is needed.
The Acquisition & Engagement Funnel Marketing is by design measurable, and most marketers are trained to value metrics, which can be at minimum tied to awareness and ideally connected to sales and loyalty. This is where the relationship between responsive content marketing and business objectives must be reconciled—what good is content if it is not connected to commerce? Content should be a vehicle, which “fills the marketing funnel” and should be leveraged as the currency, which entices the target to share, thus creating further awareness for the brand, which can lead to bringing others into the funnel. It is the consumption of content via social, web and mobile which fuels the acquisition and engagement funnel—the flow works as follows:
Shared And Found Content Drives Acquisition Content which is optimized and valuable inevitably finds its target, whether through paid, owned, earned or shared means (usually it’s a combination of all). When content is found valuable, it often leads to an “acquisition” whether it via e-mail or a subscription to a brand’s social property. The “consumer” in this construct demonstrates intent to at minimum engage with the brand.
Acquisition Drives Engagement Once a consumer, customer or prospect is acquired, a brand can further engage via content, messages, and through “micro-interactions” over time. Each like, comment, or share on Facebook for example is a micro-interaction, which solidifies the relationship and loyalty between the brand and the consumer. Loyalty Creates Awareness Customers “acquired” via social and digital means are now available for targeted content marketing tactics which can be especially effective via paid enhancements whether that be through social or search. In the case of social—shared content leads to further awareness using the networks of peers as a distribution ecosystem while organically raising its profile in organic search results.
Content As Currency: The Four Key Archetypes For content to be successfully leveraged at the open end of the marketing funnel, brands must understand the full landscape of content types and the relationships they have with their core paid, earned and owned channels. The four archetypes are:
Curated: A brand can curate content from infinite digital sources and provide value by deriving signal from noise. A popular tactic connected to curating is aggregating it in a single destination for easy access.
Co-created: Content can be co-created amongst consumers via collaboration or through the consumer and the brand itself. Brands, which encourage consumers to co-create content with it, invite them to participate but cannot often control how consumers will want to co-create.
Original: Original content is produced by the brand, specifically for its target audience and is owned by the brand. Original content can take many forms and production value and be planned in advance or spontaneously in response to emerging trends and events.
Consumer generated: Consumer or user generated content is often produced by non-professionals and May or may not include references to the brand. It’s often in highest quantity but also lowest quality.
Building & Maintaining A Responsive Content Marketing Machine In order to build a content machine for a brand or business, the leadership behind it must buy into the premise that content is a viable brand building tool. This sets the stage for an evolution of roles within the organization—brand managers must at minimum be literate in community management, editorial and digital analytics. Organizations internally should re-evaluate their digital centers of excellence and take stock of partners to ensure that content strategy and execution exists as part of the mix. This foundational work is core to then constructing a an “always ready” content machine, which operates in a continual, cyclical fashion as part marketing, part editorial operation as illustrated above.
Conclusion: Marketers Must Evolve Beyond The Linear Unlike software or web development, marketers have had less pressure to overhaul their approach despite signs that media consumption is highly fragmented, shifting to digital and increasingly more difficult to track. As more pressure is applied to the CMO to produce results for the organization; it is more than tempting to rely on the mass metrics of the past to demonstrate that reach is being achieved at scale. This undermines the need for marketing to undergo it’s own transformation where shifts in resources go into building up direct media channels (social or owned media) and potentially reaching more targeted audiences who may be inclined to share a brand’s content with their peer networks. An agile and adaptive mentality is badly needed in the marketing arm of organizations—one that is less dependent on historical data to make decisions and is inclined to parse data inputs as they come in daily.
The content conundrum represent the tip of the iceberg for the marketing discipline but must be dealt with as proof mounts that content is valued while overt advertising and marketing is something to be filtered out. Brands will learn to be more flexible, in tune with rapidly changing sentiment and responsive in their approach to messaging engagement and telling their stories across a de-centralized and splintered media landscape.
The On-Demand Expectations of Consumers:
The Complete Fragmentation of Media:
The Activist Economy:
I’ve been managing the mix between professional and personal before social networks became mainstream. Whenever I talk to someone who’s looking for advice in this area, I usually say something like…
See what Gary Vee does? Don’t do that.
Well, let me take a step back because there’s a huge caveat here. Gary’s got a near perfect professional/personal brand model if you’re one of the following:
- An entrepreneur/business owner
-CEO
-Full time digital influencer
-Your only job is to be an Internet personality for your company
For everyone else—Specifically employees of companies who expect your focus to be on building value for the company NOT building your personal brand, you can follow something of the 80/20 or maybe 70/30 rule:
Bring some of your personality into what you do professionally and do it purposefully to build equity for both you and your company. It’s not easy and gone are the days of the traditional employee so some personal brand building is now expected by employers. But a good rule of thumb is that you should never shine brighter than your company and what benefits you should benefit them.
It’s not a perfect mix, but if it’s not your name on the check, it’s a decent guideline.