I have moved my blog!

I have now integrated my blog into the new company website.  I’m not sure if I will continue posting here, or simply move it to there.  Please follow me over there if you would, and update your RSS feeds accordingly.

Has new media left strategy in the dust?

I’m exaggerating, but I do think the plunge that companies have taken into the new media space has largely ignored the importance of strategy in a way we haven’t quite seen before.

Why?

The field of new media “gained” on us very quickly, it changes every day, new tools pop up while others disappear, and one thing will work for one company while it’ll wreak havoc on another. The focus on tools lends itself to a focus on tactics. A company that “gets it” and becomes successful either gets those tools, or they’re lucky, but the success alone makes more people want to jump in and get a piece of the action.

One of the big factors in this field is exactly the speed at which it’s developing: It’s so hot right now that people feel like they should be in it or they’ll die, but at the same time, it’s a different field almost every day.

Coupled with that is the fact that the field is open and can be used by anyone. It’s not industry specific. It’s not like a few car companies with a new technology (which can certainly cause failures for some and huge successes for others). EVERYONE wants to be in the new media space and it can theoretically be used by ANY company or individual with access to the internet.  Successes and failures start adding up a lot more at that level, and it becomes harder to identify best- or worse-practices.

The Problem

What I’m seeing more and more, however, is companies that both jump-in-blind and shoot-from-the-hip. Not only do they not really get some of the technologies or platforms, but they more often than not don’t think about an overall strategy for their entry, let alone incorporating their moves into overall company strategy.

I’ve seen the following trends (some of these are very general and not meant to be all-encompassing):

1. Companies are going to PR agencies first, because PR agencies are the ones that tend to implement the tools.  Companies aren’t consulting marketers or strategists, and often times they aren’t even consulting the marketing department inside their own companies as much as they should.  Somehow they’ve decided that the two are separate functions.
2. PR agencies tend to use tactics over strategy.  They gather up the new media tools and develop a process behind one or a few, and focus on the implementation.  Strategy is downplayed, if brought into the equation at all, and the campaign ends up being sporadic or misaligned with company strategy because it’s separated and made to be simply a process.
3. Companies sometimes try and take new media involvement on themselves, and again, lose sight of strategy, and develop a very ad hoc system to play around with in the new media space, tool-by-tool.

What this leads to is a colossal waste of resources on a program that isn’t cohesive and doesn’t get the results one hopes for.

Fixing the Problem

Using a military example, any successful military commander that has ever lived will tell you that tactics are useless without a good strategy (or without a strategy period).  You can’t patch things together into a successful fort seizure unless you have the entire plan laid out and the objective made clear.

Any great marketer or any basic Marketing 101 book will tell you the exact same thing.  This was pulled from one such book, which stresses both the importance of top-level strategy to any strong marketing plan as well as the need to develop tactics and programs to support that strategy.

A few things companies can do when thinking about diving into this space:

1. Internally align yourself with your own marketing department and make sure that everyone is clear on how this works into overall company strategy.  There have to be reasons why you think it would benefit the company and clear ways in which it can remain cohesive.  As Zach said last night in his talk on Corporate Blogging: “if you want to set up a corporate blog just to set up a corporate blog, you’re not doing it for the right reasons.” [disclaimer: his talk was far more interesting than that simple statement, for more check out his blog].
2. If you choose to do the process internally, do not go tool by tool and use them separately.  Develop a plan, do research on what others have found beneficial or detrimental, know how to use the tools and how they can work together.  Then make sure that transfers into a clear strategy.  Make the strategy detailed and focused, too general will lead to the shooting-from-the-belt syndrome.
3. If you go to an external firm for help, I would suggest going with one that highlights strategy in their process.  If they’re not asking you for overall goals, what you hope to gain, they may not know themselves.

Obviously I’m a little biased, since I work for a marketing strategy firm that deals in the new media space, but I would suggest going with a marketing firm first.  Most of them have relationships with PR agencies that will then help you with the tactics and programs (although, for the record, we can help on the tactical level as well).  For instance, we have a relationship with Spotlight Communications for some of our PR needs: we can develop the strategy and then pass it to the communications folks.  Usually, since the project is split, the cost doesn’t end up being that much more, but you get a heck of a lot more in terms of taking the process from strategy straight through to program (which is what you should be doing anyway!).

You can also easily go with just a PR agency, but choose ones that are asking the right questions and identifying the right things concerning your strategy before they start talking about all the great tools out there that you can use.

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If we had to invent the stop sign….

This is fantastic.  If there were no such thing as the stop sign, and it needed to be invented, and someone decided to hire a marketing/advertising agency to get the job done.

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A Thought from Chris Brogan’s Webinar

Tuesday, Chris Brogan hosted a webinar entitled “Who Really Owns Your Brand?”  The biggest takeaway I had from the talk was a question as to whether the title captured what I thought the discussion was trying to get at.  Is the question Who owns the brand? or is the question more like How has brand ownership shifted (towards the consumer/customer)?

The original business purpose of a brand was to create ownership, either through a name, a logo or what have you.  Below are a few definitions you can find on the web:

Brand
There are several definitions for a brand; we have listed two below:

• A brand is the intangible sum of an organization’s attributes: it can include its name, its history, its reputation, its packaging, and the way it is advertised.
• A brand is an identifying symbol, sign, name, or mark that distinguishes an organization or a product from its competitors.

Brand
A unique and identifiable symbol, association, name or trademark which serves to differentiate competing products or services. Both a physical and emotional trigger to create a relationship between consumers and the product/service.

Brand
A product or service which has been given an identity; it has a brand name and the added value of a brand image.

These are only examples of brand definitions, you can find a ton of other ones.  But I’ve included them all because they all, in some way, shape, or form, indicate that a brand has always relied on….should I say, been dictated by….the consumer.  It has always been partially “owned” by the consumer.  A brand could not be good, or bad, without the consumer. [please note, we're talking about the term "brand" as used in business, not cattle herding]

A few tweets from #twebinar after I posted the comment “Haven’t customers always owned part of the brand? They just now have much more sway/influence in that ownership”:

Linda Famous: agreed. customers always have a share in creating the brand, but % varies.

Christine P: I totally agree re: customers always own part of the brand. Or at least influence its life/direction.

Kerry G: yes, to a certain extent companies set the brand path and consumers decide what it actually means

In terms of the current debate about who owns a brand (beyond just this webinar), the way in which people are describing customers/consumers role in brand making has always been the same.  The extent to which they are able to influence the brand (e.g. their ability to be heard by thousands instead of hundreds, or just a few) has changed.  Brands may have been able to get away with having a few dissenting voices 20 years ago, but now those dissenting voices matter more.

The relationship between a customer and a brand has not changed.  The concept of “ownership” that is part of the current debate has not changed.  What has changed is the dynamics of that relationship, the way in which ownership is manifest and, perhaps, what level of ownership the customer actually has.  And, even more importantly, how can companies best manage this change in dynamics?

A new title?

What else could we title a webinar on this topic?  A few brainstorms (these are pretty paltry):

• “Evolution of Brand Ownership”
• “Are Companies Losing Ownership of their Brands?”
• “How Can Companies Share Brand Ownership Today?”

Do you have any suggestions on new titles?

Official Company Launch

I’ve been slightly MIA (apologies for those who noticed…and cared), but for good reason.  The company website is done, and has been officially launched, which is very exciting.

I think what this means is that the company is finally up and running….!  Check it out below.

Contributing to another blog as well….

I will now be writing additional blog posts on DigiActive, an all-volunteer based organization with the mission of:

“helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact. Our goal is a world of activists made more powerful and more effective through the use of digital technology.”

I’ll be writing there about once a week, and will let you know when I’ve done so.  The site in general is very interesting, and offers powerful examples and advice on using the internet to spread social causes.

My first posting is a some small pieces of advice on permission marketing, which I wrote about in this blog a few months ago.  I felt the marketing tactic was directly applicable to social activism.

Analysis: The new Trek commercial

In case you didn’t know, I love the Tour de France (the first five stages this year were in Bretagne, my favorite part of France, so it was an extra treat).  Unfortunately, viewing it in the states means being forced through the same five commercials from the sponsors for 21 days.  Well, this year I was pleasantly surprised and pleased by the effectiveness of the above Trek commercial.

Mechanisms

1. Repetition – Using the phrase “We Believe” throughout the commercial solidifies the phrase in the listener’s mind
2. Emotional connection – The commercial uses a series of positive and powerful emotions to connect with the listener, such as charity work, relationships with your children, winning, agelessness…. they’ve done a pretty solid job of hitting emotions of a wide-range of potential consumers.
3. Link to bikes – After establishing the emotional connection with the listeners, Trek links them directly to their bikes, highlighting that their bikes deliver those emotions to consumers, and that Trek itself “believes” in and supports those emotions.  In fact, Trek helps consumers achieve those emotions (according to them).

Yes, these are basic marketing techniques, but honestly, you don’t see it done well very often.  Somehow companies mess it up on a regular basis.  But Trek did well.

The fact they also have a cyclist-turned-celebrity as the announcer doesn’t hurt either

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Some thoughts from the Social Media Breakfast Boston

This morning I attended the Social Media Breakfast in Boston, the 8th one here (check out the site for events in your city). Firstly, Bryan Person, the original founder, did a great job of organizing, although it sounds like this isn’t his first time.

The topic was on the use of video in social media and the line up was

• Emily Belyea and Ben Grossman, principal at The Plenary Group
• Larry Lawfer, YourStorys founder and president
• Jeff Glasson, director of social media & technology at PerkettPR
• Rob Lane, CEO/co-founder of Overlay.TV

Each one had some really valuable key points that I’d like to share, without going through each presentation in their entirety.

Emily and Ben, in an advertising competition, came up with the concept of The Running Man for AOL. It’s an online community where users can share their stories about AIM (that’s the short and sweet of it). From their research came the following insights

1. Storytelling works. People have interesting stories about the brand, and they want to share them.
2. Viral also works. An unexpected consequence of the project, and closely tied to the previous comment, is that, when good storytelling happens, viewers want to participate, and they want to talk about it and pass it along. The website ended up wildly popular very quickly, which encouraged Ben and Emily to open it up to everyone to post their own stories.
3. Video is a much more transparent, and therefore genuine, medium through which to connect to consumers. Because the videos include real people, real actions, can be seen and there’s very little perceived editing or scripting, viewers tend to take it as “more true.”

Larry Lawfer offered up the following:

1. Social media is about engaging clients and customers in a dialog, the question is how to get them to join.
2. Video can be effectively used for internal marketing purposes, without having a consumer see a second of the marketing footage.
3. The real long-term value in video is the content. Larry suggests creating, gathering, and cataloging all content, and then save it and share it later both externally and internally, while also having it fully accessible to the employees and the sales force.

Jeff Glasson spoke a little more generally about the use of video, and offered the following words of wisdom:

1. There are a few different ways to use video: build a huge community around video, Gary Vaynerchuk style; Invite the community in; make it contest-based; etc.
2. All of this puts a human face on your company. Your users can see what others think of you, good or bad, and they want to interact.
3. His advice? Don’t be afraid to experiment, but make sure you protect your brand (think about the quality and content).
4. Also, while it may be tempting to distribute across platforms (this creates multiple touch points), this process separates your content into separate communities, each needing its own management and preventing interaction across communities.

Rob Lane’s presentation of Overlay.tv was neat. It was mostly a case study of some of Overlay’s users but offered the following:

1. Overlay’s philosophy is to go beyond just video, and make the experience interactive for the user. The purpose is to both engage and communicate information.
2. Overlay’s users vary, but it goes without saying that the more successful content is based on a clear-cut strategy.

The biggest take-aways from the Q&A were that, firstly, much of this technology is free, so affordability isn’t necessarily an issue. The real issue lies in what quality level you’re shooting for, who you’re trying to reach and what you’re trying to communicate. By and far one of the most important things is that, in order to be truly successful, there needs to be a lot of pre-content analysis, strategy building, and plan-making. It isn’t just about putting out a video….

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A transfer ticket to PopTech! available.

In the time it took me to get off the waiting list for the PopTech conference in October, I got involved in Tara Hunt’s (super) Hero Camp. On that note, I have one ticket available to transfer to someone, should they be interested!

I will put my own personal plug in for PopTech. It’s got incredibly line up, and is full of fantastically motivating people. I’ve heard about it for years from co-Founder Anthony Citrano, and have been waiting until I had the means to go. Hopefully I will be able to join next year. In the meantime, surely someone would like to go out there?

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Short Break until Wednesday.

I’m in Lake Tahoe for a wedding and am going to try and write a post tomorrow, but it may not come until Wednesday.

In the meantime, a few articles for your reading pleasure:

Short and sweet article on brand positioning, on Brand Strategy
Starting a social media strategy, on Chris Brogan’s blog
How to make your website sticky, from the Conversation Agent blog
A few tips on blogger relations, from Diva Marketing
Seeing opportunity in a down market, by Pamela Slim

And for those of you on Twitter, a quick list of some people to follow for conversation on new media and marketing and doing cool things:

Jeremiah Owyang
Chris Abraham
Steve Garfield (he does some great streams on a pretty regular basis)
Laura Fitton
Tara Hunt

Enjoy!

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