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Archive for the 'social media' Category

Feb

And the winner is … Google

By Kirk 1 Comment

Categories: advertising, copywriting, interactive marketing, mass media, search engine marketing, social media and strategy

In its Super Bowl commercial, Google tells an engaging little story of romance with simplicity and elegance. Appropriately, it uses keywords and search results only.

Its logo is onscreen almost the entire time, while it demonstrates several of its features and benefits. It effectively offsets Bing’s recent efforts at malignment.

Not only was the spot inexpensive to produce, but it stood out from the sophomoric humor and over-the top production of the majority of the commercials.

Erik Sherman, in his negative review of the spot at BNET, misses the point that by airing the spot in the Super Bowl, Google reached millions and millions who haven’t already seen it on YouTube.

Smart marketing all the way around.

Which spot do you feel was most effective?

Dec

The North Face Dilemma: Spank the Butt or turn the other cheek?

By Kirk 3 Comments

Categories: identity, loyalty, promotion, public relations, retail and social media

Okay, it’s a little bit funny.

At least the first time you see this parody of The North Face’s familiar logo.

But The North Face is not laughing. It is, instead, suing young Jimmy Winkelmann, founder of The South Butt brand, for trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and unfair competition.

Winkelmann isn’t subtle about the inspiration for his line of casual apparel. The South Butt’s tagline is “Never Stop Relaxing,” a play on The North Face’s “Never Stop Exploring.”

On his web site, Winkelmann says, “I thought of The South Butt in response to a growing number of people who continued buying gear and clothes from a brand they really didn’t relate to, but were buying because ‘everyone else was.’

“After seeing the same people wearing the same brands, I decided to create a way to poke fun at the norm, while making an affordable and quality product.”

Despite his disclaimer (”If you are unable to discern the difference between a face and a butt, we encourage you to buy North Face products.”), he’s not just having fun. He’s selling merchandise — much more now due to the media attention provided by the lawsuit.

An article by Jim Salter of the Associated Press quotes the suit: “They (The South Butt) are marketing apparel that directly and unabashedly infringes and dilutes The North Face’s famous trademarks and duplicates The North Face’s trade dress in its iconic Denali jacket.”

“While defendants may try to legitimize their piracy under the banner of parody, their own conduct belies that claim,” the suit said. Supposedly, The South Butt has twice attempted to register its trademark and once offered to sell The South Butt to the The North Face for $1 million.

Winkelmann is capitalizing on the attention. He’s launched a game on his Facebook page, entitled “Can you tell tell the difference between a face and a butt? Take The South Butt Challenge.” He’s making media appearances. He’s leveraging a brand built by someone else. He’s making money.

“This is bigger than facing down a bully in the school yard,” said Albert Watkins, attorney for The South Butt and Winkelmann. “This goes to the heart of competition, the concept of an open marketplace, and the freedom of the public to make their own choice.”

So which is it? A parody, free enterprise, or a rip-off?

Are The North Face customers confused? Not likely.

Are they switching brands? No.

Is The South Butt a long-term threat to The North Face’s market share? No.

For The North Face, this is not about money.

It’s about demonstrating, for legal reasons, that they are willing to defend their brand. One of the ways a brand keeps its trademarks defensible is by proving it will not tolerate copycats. Putting Winkelmann out of business would send a message and serve to scare off other potential interlopers.

But there’s a risk. Legal action and continued media interest may make The North Face look humorless, corporate and stodgy. A heavy-handed handling of this frat-boy joke and the accompanying bad PR may not appeal to its younger customers. (Currently, The North Face does not respond to questions about the lawsuit and does not reference the issue in its social media. So much for transparency.)

How do you think The North Face should handle this?

Drop the lawsuit and be a good sport?

Or scuttle the Butt?

Nov

Patagonia: They also sell clothes

By Kirk 2 Comments

Categories: brand essence, budgeting, cause marketing, loyalty, mass media, promotion, retail and social media

There are brands and then there are affinity brands.

The difference? Community.

You don’t just experience an affinity brand. Your identity is enmeshed with it. You are a proud member of the club.

“Cult Brands aren’t just companies with products or services to sell,” says BJ Bueno, co-author of The Power of Cult Branding: How 9 Magnetic Brands Turned Customers into Loyal Followers. “To many of their followers, they are a living, breathing surrogate family filled with like-minded individuals.”

Few brands exemplify affinity branding as well as Patagonia.

Patagonia makes outdoor apparel for climbing, surfing, skiing, and other low-impact sports. Its clothes are renown for their durability and performance.

But at Patagonia, it’s not about the clothes — which is characteristic of affinity brands. Selling apparel at Patagonia is practically an afterthought. Or so it seems.

Instead, affinity brands build a community of diehard evangelists around a common cause or set of values.

Patagonia’s cause began with its founder, Yvon Chouinard.

Chouinard, a rock climber and surfer, got his start making tools for climbers. Around 1970, he became aware that steel pitons were causing significant damage to rock-climbing surfaces. Inspired, he developed new alternatives and introduced a style of climbing called “clean climbing.” The result: his innovations revolutionized climbing, despite destroying the sales of pitons which accounted for 70% of his income.

Planet first. Company second.

“What is it that we all so love about the experience of being in raw nature?” Chouinard asks. “And having known raw nature, don’t we have an obligation to protect it?”

At Patagonia, protecting it is the priority.

In 1986, Chouinard committed the company to environmental activism and paid employees to work on local community projects. In 1994, Patagonia switched to using pesticide-free (organically-grown) cotton as well as recycled polyester in its clothing. Always planet first.

Today, the scale of Patagonia’s commitment is impressive. The environmentalism page of its web site lists its numerous initiatives, including Conservacion Patagonica, working toward the creation of Patagonia National Park; The Conservation Alliance, encouraging companies in the outdoor industry to support environmental organizations; 1% For The Planet encouraging all businesses to donate at least 1% of their annual net revenues to the environment, and more.

Through its Common Threads Recycling Program, Patagonia uses a fiber-to-fiber system to make new garments from old.

“For us at Patagonia, a love of wild and beautiful places demands participation in the fight to save them.”

How do brands create affinity?

“Brand communities exhibit three traditional markers of community,” according to Thomas O’Guinn and Albert Muniz in “Brand Community,” a 2001 article published in the Journal of Consumer Research. “Shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility.”

All are present within the Patagonia community.

Company “ambassadors” share knowledge and experiences from the field on its blog The Cleanest Line, its own video channel The Tin Shed, and its YouTube channel. Outdoor enthusiasts and preservationists connect on Facebook and Twitter.

True, there’s a big difference between summiting Everest and wearing a Patagonia hoody to the park. But an affinity brand allows one to participate in the common cause. As Patagonia says, “Reward comes in the form of hard-won grace and moments of connection between us and nature.”

Which other brands inspire community?

Nov

Your social media marketing linchpin: branding

By Kirk 0 Comments

Categories: art direction & design, brand essence, guest posts, mass media, social media and standards

I’m pleased to share the following guest post by Gary Moneysmith. Gary is the Interactive Strategy Director and social media guru at Conrad | Phillips | Vutech (where I work). Be sure to visit his blog, Social Media @ Work & Play, for more insights.

Ever watch your grandmother sort through her (postal) mail? If your granny is anything like mine, she carefully inspects and opens piece after piece. You just want to scream, “Just scan and throw it out — it’s all junk!”

Having grown up in the era of bulk postage rates, we’ve developed a ninja-fast ability to discern what’s real and what’s not when it comes to the daily mail haul. Why? To preserve our mental health. We’re overloaded with marketing messages every day on the radio, television, billboards and of course, our mailbox. If we gave every offer a neighborly, 1900s-like consideration, we’d never make it through our day. It’s too much and most of it’s crap.

As a defense mechanism, we’ve developed a sixth sense to gauge what’s legitimate and what’s not. We can scan an email inbox with hundreds of messages and quickly identify the few “real” ones. We rifle through pages of Google results to find sources we can trust and which should be ignored. We read product reviews on Amazon and quickly decide which are helpful and which aren’t. Our brains are gold-panning supercomputers instantaneously filtering our way through daily information overload.

Now, consider social media, the most eclectic, ever-changing fire hose of information in human history. As online marketers, what can we do to make sure our legitimate voice and information is taken seriously?

Answer: Branding. Yep, that old school marketing stuff …

Your brand is the genuine, distinct personality of your company. It’s what your organization stands for and makes you unique in a sea of otherwise sameness. It’s an emotional connection or way people react to a logo or product. And while it’s often associated with a visual/logo (an icon that symbolizes your brand), it includes what you say and how you say it as well. Over time, your brand builds equity — it means something to people and has value. It builds trust, justifies your attention, and rationalizes a premium price.

When it comes to social media, the need for branding is greater than ever. People may find your organization’s Web site in search engine results along with your Twitter account, Facebook group, YouTube channel and blog. Do all these places “feel” the same? Do they speak with the same voice? Do they offer consistent materials?

Now, considering the chipmunk-on-meth attention span of most Web visitors, does your social media channel pass the five-second brand consistency test? Pull up one of your social media channels (say, your blog) then quickly review it for visuals, personality and content:

Visual Presentation
Are you using your logo correctly — colors/size/spacing? Does your color scheme match your Web site? Do your photos match your other marketing materials?
Personality
Does it convey the right tone and spirit? Does it “feel” like your organization?
Content
Is the material you offer appropriate? Or is it just copy-and-pasted from your annual report? Does the depth and breadth of content reflect your expertise? Is it what people would expect?

There’s a lot in social media that you can’t control, but what you say and how you say it is still your choice. Your online brand identity should be treated as an invaluable asset that MUST be nurtured and protected. Because without it, you’re just a commodity fighting to breathe in an increasingly crowded online marketplace.

Jul

Tour de Tweets

By Kirk 2 Comments

Categories: cause marketing, event marketing, health care, promotion, social media and strategy

The 2009 Tour de France, highlighted by Lance Armstrong’s return, may be remembered as much for being the first sporting event in history to fully integrate social media into the competition and the coverage.

Nearly every one of the 20 teams blogged and tweeted (e.g., Garmin-Slipstream and Astana).

Numerous riders and team managers tweeted as well (e.g., Levi Leipheimer, Andy Schleck, and Johan Bruyneel. (For examples of Twitter use by riders, see Dara Kerr’s post at CNET News.)

Active.com combined tweets from all of the participating riders and managers into one stream.

Armstrong, a skilled promoter, was most prolific. In Becky Ebenkamp’s post at Brandweek, Richard Rosenblatt, CEO of Demand Media, which owns the Livestrong.com community, said, “(Armstrong) called up and said, ‘I … want to broadcast through Livestrong.com exclusively and use Twitter to make sure people can not only see the tour, but actually feel it and hear it directly from my mouth — unedited.’”

His Twitter and Facebook posts regularly included behind-the-scenes videos and photos. A skilled promoter, he leveraged his celebrity and his celebrity friends to raise awareness for Livestrong, such as Ben Stiller clowning on Lance’s warm-up bike.

Traditional sports media relied on Twitter for leads. The Daily Mail published Lance’s Twitter diary. And while many of the riders’ posts were banal, some provided real insight into the action, such as this entry by multiple-stage winner Mark Cavendish, “Yesterday with 3km to go, Piet Rooijakkers (skil shimano) kidney punched me.”

The official Tour de France site included a fantasy team competition as well as blogs and Twitter.

Versus.com, the site of the TV network which broadcast the race, incorporated a dazzling array of fan-friendly features, including live coverage, mobile alerts, daily blogs including Armstrong’s, a message board, a widget providing updates, podcasts, an ask-the-expert feature, a serialized graphic novel, a sweepstakes, a virtual library of video and photos, trivia quizzes, and games.

One of Armstong’s sponsors, Nike, donates proceeds from the sale of Livestrong products to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Its tour site provided visitors the opportunity to post their own stories of hope in the face of cancer in words or video.

It also featured an ingenious innovation — the Chalkbot. Messages of encouragement and remembrance, texted by site visitors, were spray-chalked thousands of miles away on the roads of the tour during the event by the Chalkbot. Who could resist memorializing a loved one in this way?

The 2009 Tour was perhaps the most connected athletes, teams, sponsors, charities, media and fans have ever been. Where do you think it will lead?

Jun

Why corporate brands will outperform the Twitter elite

By Kirk 3 Comments

Categories: social media and strategy

Mitch Joel’s recent post, “The Dirty Little Secret Of The Twitter Elite,” and the accompanying comments got me thinking about how shabbily most followers are treated by social media celebrities. And how corporate brands will have to perform to a much higher standard or eventually fail.

In brief, Joel’s post observed that social media gurus and Hollywood celebs with huge followings pay very little attention to the majority of their followers. Even the ones they follow back. Virtually no real conversation is occurring between the elite and the masses. We are being filtered out by Tweetdeck and the like. And for an obvious reason–who has time to interact with hundreds of thousands? A commenter to the post asked, “Would you go to a cocktail party and actually try to talk to 1000+ in one evening?”

I follow Lance Armstrong because I enjoy the Tour de France. Following him adds some dimension to the race. (I also follow Leipheimer, Vande Velde, McEuwen and others.) I don’t send Armstrong messages because I wouldn’t expect him to respond. How could he? Why would he? I’m sure he receives thousands of inquiries a day from fans and simply doesn’t have time to exchange cycling stories with all of them. And I’m fine with that.

But I would feel differently if I contacted a corporate brand and didn’t hear back. I’ll forgive Lance Armstrong but I won’t forgive Ford, Pepsi or Sony.

If I send a message to Starbucks, Microsoft or Southwest Airlines , I expect an answer. If they don’t pay attention to my concerns, I might switch brands. Why? Because I expect them to care about my patronage.

This requires staffing. Social media is 24/7 and must be engaged continuously. Corporations can do that; individuals can’t. Unless they have people, which would no longer be real.

Ironic, isn’t it? Those gigantic, faceless, monolithic corporations we love to hate can, must, and will be better than individuals at actually engaging larger communities.

Do you forgive the Twitterati who ignore you? Would you forgive a corporate brand?

How do the brands you know staff for round-the-clock community management?

Jun

Is channel-neutral the new integrated?

By Kirk 1 Comment

Categories: advertising, client-agency relationships, interactive marketing, mass media, public relations and social media

Marketing firms used to refer to themselves as “full-service.”

Then they were “integrated.”

Now they are “hybrid” and “channel-neutral.” And once again “integrated.”

What’s the difference?

Full-service means all of the services one might expect a marketing firm to offer are in-house. The firm does not specialize in any one function, such as media-buying or PR.

Integrated marketing, according to the American Marketing Association, is “a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.” Today, the concept includes both online and offline marketing channels, which is why it has re-emerged.

A firm which describes itself as channel-neutral, H2M, says “we hold no bias nor any vested interest in any media, communication channel or holding company of any particular media channel. We house expertise in all media disciplines, but remain impartial as to each channel’s use. This guarantees truly unbiased recommendations regarding our clients’ business.”

Hybrid applies to the combination of expertise for both offline and online channels under one roof, i.e. a hybrid of a traditional marketing firm and an interactive firm. Offline channels include print, direct mail, public relations, outdoor, radio, and television. Online channels include search engine marketing and optimization, email, online advertising, social media marketing, and mobile marketing.

Notes for CMOs:

There is no standard for how many services make up full-service, nor does being full-service imply that the services are coordinated with each other.
Integration speaks to efficiency, not channel-neutrality.
These days you should expect all of a firm’s services to be integrated for better results. Integration should be the consultant’s responsibility, not yours.
You should also expect channel-neutrality from a strategic partner. It’s in your best interest to consider all options in an unbiased manner. Obviously, if you work with specialty firms, they are going to recommend their specialty.
More and more firms are claiming to be hybrids as they add services, but they are usually stronger in one area than another.
There are advantages to working with specialists and advantages to working with integrated marketing firms. The choice, as always, is yours.

P.S. Since posting, I’ve heard the phrase “channel-agnostic,” which presumably means the same as “channel-neutral.”

May

12 things to do before the upturn

By Kirk 0 Comments

Categories: advertising, budgeting, interactive marketing, mass media, research, social media and strategy

Sales are flat. Travel is canceled. Your budget has been cut. It’s a good time to do some housekeeping.

With an eye toward the eventual upturn, here are 12 tips to get your strategic marketing plan ready:

Take the time to retreat with senior leadership and strategize now. Think long-term.
Audit your competitors.
Talk to your customers. Conduct a satisfaction survey.
Review your customer relationship management (CRM) program. Rebuild your database. Ask for email addresses and mobile numbers. You’ll need them soon.
Update your brand positioning and message strategies.
Review and update your advertising and sales materials. Or at least get them ready to print.
Keep in touch with enewsletters.
Reuse old ads. Save on production.
Media rates are down. Buy more with less money and stand out from your competitors. Or shift the savings to other channels, such as search engine marketing.
Update your website with more functionality for customers. Make sure it is search engine optimized.
Get up to speed on the newer interactive channels–social media marketing and mobile marketing. Set up and monitor your social media channels.
Train your sales staff.

Which other ones can you add?

May

Setting social media up for failure — don’t advertise

By Kirk 0 Comments

Categories: advertising, budgeting, guest posts, mass media and social media

Dear Marketers:

You can’t do it all with social media. There, I said it. I know marketing budgets have been slashed and management is clamoring to use those free, newfangled web 2.0 tools. But you can’t turn to social media to save the day. It sucks, I know.

Social media is a slow build. Blogs and Twitter don’t just “go viral” before your eyes. It’s more like planting a seed, fertilizing it and tending to it carefully over time. The more you support it with complementary traditional advertising, the better the odds of it taking root and blossoming. Cross-channel marketing of social media initiatives is extremely helpful, but easily overlooked, especially during tough economic times. Remember the Subservient Chicken campaign by Burger King? Yah, it was supported by a national television advertising campaign that’s cost was certainly NOT chicken feed. They spent a few hundred grand on a cool website/social media initiative, but then invested several million dollars in advertising to support it. Very important point not to forget.

Or how about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign that set a new standard of excellence for grassroots, internet marketing–seemingly deploying every social media channel available. According to BusinessInsider.com, Obama’s spend on the internet was a surprisingly low $8 million. That’s just 3% of the $245 million he spent on television advertising. Clearly he wouldn’t have spent such a colossal sum on television if it wasn’t necessary.

Change doesn’t have to be a light-switch proposition. Start a social media initiative today, but be sure to make sure it’s “on brand” and supported by complementary advertising and public relations. Over time (months or years), transition money from the traditional media budget into the social media campaign itself, but only after it has sprouted and is displaying positive signs of growth. Abandoning a social media campaign to survive on its own does nothing more than waste your time and money, and seal its fate as a failure.

Sincerely,

Gary