What Makes A Good Direct Response Campaign

A phrase that gets under my skin like almost no other is when a branding agency creative director says something akin to, "If we have to do direct, we're going to do it right." Of course implying that direct creative sucks and needs a massive make-over.

First, the humble admission from one who has done plenty of direct: Direct creative DOES largely suck. Sorry to my direct friends and associates, but let's be honest. The reason we get so much flack from the rest of the industry is because we are still using creative tactics from the 1950s and hiding behind the "but it works" mantra.

Fine. Agreed. It works. And so does holding a gun to people's heads. I bet I could sell just about anything to anyone if you handed me a gun and an offer.

But all this aside, the reason I'm so bothered by the thought that somehow fixing creative will fix the image of direct, is because creative goals at the expense of "what works" will harm the entire eco-system of advertising if done incorrectly. Statements like "we're gonna do it right" ignore that the brand efforts -- the broadcast commercials and print ads and amazing web sites and all the rest of the work that usually win top creative awards -- all live on the back of the direct and sales efforts. Those advertising budgets have to come from somewhere. And "buzz metrics" don't pay the bills.

The only reason a branding effort gets to make nebulous claims of "impressions" is because somewhere down the line sales are moving in a positive direction. I'm not saying that branding doesn't contribute to the process, because it does. But actual sales move by the kinds of measurable promotions that response-based marketing achieves. While I agree that direct creative definitely needs to raise the bar, let's at least also agree that most general advertising creative directors don't have the first clue as to how that should be done. They think they do, but in practice it usually ends up as a phenomenally expensive idea that can't be cost-justified against the return on investment.

So let's be clear here: A truly awesome direct campaign is ALWAYS based on a trio of factors -- strategy, results and creative. Any evaluation of direct response work, and any effort to improve that work, needs to look at all three factors or you're simply stroking your ego.

Strategy

Clearly all advertising depends on strategy, so it's not unique that direct depends on it too. What is unique, however, is the level of this dependency.

Strategy in direct is not just about winning hearts and minds or defining messaging and media. It's also an exercise in tactical brilliance. It involves a level of targeting that can define a message down to dozens of groups, if not to the individual level. And it takes a familiarity with the creative and production elements necessary to move a person to respond. Often they are intimately involved with creative details like format and color, because that's how detailed we get in direct marketing. Knowing that certain audiences respond better to certain colors, regardless of brand pallet, is important information. Because sometimes as little as a 1% lift in response can be mean a million more dollars in revenue.

Results

And speaking of response, a direct campaign always has an eye on the goal. We start backwards from the target sales figure and figure out EXACTLY how we can best reach this. We show a clear path to the sale and we determine that optimal balance between program cost and expected return, based on the target audience, expected response rates and expected sales. We have figures for cost per acquisition and lifetime customer value, so we KNOW what the results will be before we send out the first package or air the first spot. And we are always testing and refining a program, to see how to make it better. Direct lives and dies on results. So it's never a guessing game or a vague notion of brand perception.

Creative

Now we come to creative. And given the above factors, you can see what a narrow and restrictive box it can be. It's not just that strategy is trying to tell creative what to do. It's the fact that strategy can often dictate the approaches that need to take place. And the results can often mean changing colors or images or copy or actors or even the entire layout and format.

To most people in advertising, this is the very essence of the "problem" with direct. It's creative determined by a committee. And admittedly the process is fraught with frustration. But it's also a challenge well worth fighting. Because if you can see past the limitation of the box, an amazing blending happens here. Many times it won't win a One Show Pencil, but it's work that can be truly ingenious and satisfying and it gets the job done.

And it bears repeating that despite the fact direct creative can many times offend advertising sensibilities with its stock images and pre-determined formats and 800 numbers in the bottom bar of the TV spot, we must remember that it's also held to a different standard. It doesn't need to be, nor should it be, the brand campaign. What it needs to be is a translation of the brand campaign that closes the communications loop and closes the deal.

So let's at the very least agree to disagree among the disciplines. Because without each other we'd have people feeling good about brands they don't buy and buying from brands that they couldn't care less about.

The Ever Elusive Iconic Brand

The recent Michael Jackson unpleasantness has led your humble host of The BeanCast Marketing Podcast to some interesting thinking. To be more specific, I've been contemplating our drive in advertising, and in media as a whole, to create icons.

Repeatedly during the past week leading up to the memorial extravaganza-concert-circus, the press was amazed at the level of attention the recently deceased Jackson received. You would hear again and again how, "This is the biggest memorial ever for a celebrity." And pundits wondered, "Will we ever see the like again?"

It's that last question that particularly gives me pause. Because the question is essentially, "Will we ever again see the rise of such an iconic figure?" It makes me realize that the same can be asked of brand icons. Because while brands will always rise to popularity, for them to be enduring icons takes a special blend of factors that are being increasingly hampered by a disposable economy.

The Demand for Disposability

A very basic fact of capitalism is the need for growth. Stagnation can often be the same as death in the world of business. But at certain points in this growth you reach plateaus, whether because of saturation of the market and/or increased competition. So to overcome these natural flattening periods, products and services are reconfigured to shorten the lifespan, or intentionally made obsolete by the introduction of newer products.

Now, as we all should know since this is basic economics, this creates a disposal economy, which artificially erases that line we reach when we have everything we need or want, creating the perception that we now need better. Seems like a practical approach to growth, right? Except that in order to create this constant need, you have to devalue the product. It can burn bright and short. But burning long just gets in the way.

Disposable Products Break Lasting Attachments

It's my belief that this drive to the disposable eventually infects the brands themselves. With increased competition and everyone playing this same game of making products less meaningful and more replaceable, we soften attachments. And in this softening of attachments to products, comes an inevitable softening of attachments to the brands.

Buyers become both more discriminating and more willing to part with you for the sake of the next cool thing. Which places increasing burdens on a company to consistently outdo itself to keep the customer in the fold. And I think it's pretty clear that in practice this is impossible to maintain forever.

Even if you don't play the disposable game and build a lasting product or load in value service, the disposable mindset is still there. Consumers have been conditioned to abandon the old in favor of the new and brands are easily tossed aside.

Creating the Indispensable Brand

So what does a brand need to do in order to stay relevant and present with a customer? I wish I had the catch-all answer. Obviously all the cylinders of the engine need to be firing. The product needs to be strong, the brand needs to be intriguing and you need to be aggressively enhancing your offering at all times. But I think it's also clear that brand attachment can no longer just be about a great product and a captivating identity. It needs to also extend to the entire relationship experience. And no, I'm not about to invoke the "social media" buzz phrase here. Because while brand efforts can benefit from customer interactions, what I'm suggesting goes far beyond the listening and responding model of good sales.

It's solid advertising practice to use a structured approach to the brand. We know what the unique selling proposition (USP) is and we've clearly defined the brand essence so that all messaging can directly point back to this key understanding. But this structured approach doesn't adequately account for the role of customer service and customer experience. What do we do with customer impressions of our brand that are counter to our image? How do we leverage the uncontrollable factors of customer generated excitement?

In the past (and probably even today) we invented new ideas, like Alex Wipperfurth's "brand hijack." We've also explored ad nauseum the arena of user-generated content (UGC). But I think approaches like these unnecessarily complicate and confused the issue more than help. Customers have always tried to "own" brands, this much is true. But they make poor brand managers. Most have no interest in sustaining their own user-generated excitement. So the need isn't necessarily to embrace some new paradigm where the customer owns the brand or creates the ad, as much as find ways for the brand to feed this ongoing, emotional excitement.

A great example of how this can work comes from my ever-trusty Apple. The user-generated excitement surrounding this brand has been around for years. Fan clubs, discussion boards, user-groups, listservs, podcasts -- there have been, and continue to be, thousands of these expressions of loyalty to this brand. But it wasn't until Steve Jobs returned and initiated an almost Disneyesque approach to walling off the magic and projecting a strictly managed and dictated brand image that all the hype reached a fever pitch. Why? Because as much as customers think they own this brand and want a say in the products, that's not what drew them to the brand in the first place. What drew them was this idea that they were somehow being counter-cultural in their choice. They were part of an exclusive club that always seemed to anticipate their needs. And what they really needed a leader for their club, not a mirror of their expectations.

Apple understood (and hopefully understands still) that the fuel behind the devotion was a desire to be wowed and surprised by insanely great stuff. So instead of creating a reflection of the people who use the product, they set out to create a brand that re-captured and enhanced the mystique, design excellence and simplicity that has always excited its base. It's a brand that fuels imagination rather than dictates it, and allows people to easily paint their own experience onto it.

It All Has To Work Together

There's a huge lesson to be learned here. We talk a good game about needing to get in touch with our customers, listen to their needs and respond quickly, but the more important thing over the long term is how we craft our brand to inspire our customers. Because while social media strategies will help you in the short term to create loyalty and understand the customer's experience with you, it's the branding work that will give all these diverse customers with their many varied experiences a common rallying point. It creates the opportunity to feel part of something bigger.

This is why social media darling, Zappos, is seeking help with their brand now. As much as they are a poster child as a social success story, they have no identity beyond anecdotal customer service stories. While that's great for cementing the loyalty of the customers they help and a great tale to tell, it relies too much on the continuation of customer excitement, without giving them a rallying point beyond a logo and a website. The excitement is unsustainable in this fashion and competition threatens to make them a brand easily disposed of at the next opportunity for even more excitement

Yet clearly branding alone is not enough. Everyone can recognize the United Airlines brand, but customer experience is so poor and social outreach so anemic, that everyone now assumes they will break guitars. And going back to the disposable model, without customer service that embodies the brand, people are all too willing to leave you at the first opportunity.

Being iconic is clearly tougher than ever. But not impossible. It takes a commitment to creating an entirety of experience where everything from the product to the in-bound call center to management ethics to ads you produce all work together to create an entirety of experience for the customer. A tall order to be sure, but one well worth striving for if it keeps you consistently relevant and beloved in the eyes of your customers.

Is The "New PR" Just Talking To Itself?

I was floored last night listening to This Week in Tech, episode 202.

There's no denying the show can be a bit anti-marketing. Leo Laporte and his crew are tech people, not advertising folks. But many of them (all of them, in this episode) come from a journalism/media background and do see the other side of this divide. And their insights are pretty damning.

I won't even bother to try to encapsulate the entire discussion. You really NEED to listen to the show yourself. Especially you, Brian Solis, because you were specifically called out. But I will try to encapsulate a few of the more valid points made by guest host,John Dvorak, and his panel of Becky Worley (ABC), Natali Del Conte (CBS) and Carlos Rodela (Mevio).

You Can't Fake a Relationship

Parties and Twitter banter and personal notes are all well and good, but they make poor substitutes for real friendship. No matter how much we try to pretend that the way to a journalist's heart is through being "friendly and engaging," most real journalists are not looking for friends. They are looking for facts and reliable resources for those facts. If you already happen to be a friend too, big bonus. But that comes from watching their sick kid while they run to the drug store, not by buying them drinks at the tweetup.

Solid Information and Press Releases Still Matter

Speaking of facts, journalists still appreciate a well-written, no-bull, appropriately-targeted press release. We're losing this art. In our efforts to promote, we often forget that a big part of PR is also to help the journalists we know on a regular basis. So give them the unadulterated facts. And to further this point, if you truly want to be a journalist's "friend," maybe you should consider giving them facts and info regularly that have nothing to do with promoting your client. Build the relationship in equal parts to the contact.

The True Influencers Aren't Taking Your Calls

The anecdotes in this show are so eye-opening! Because they reveal so clearly that the journalists and media people with the most street cred are also the most skeptical. They may take your free drink and eat your shrimp, but they aren't reading your blog, they're deleting your emails and they aren't returning your calls. Why? Because they can get the same information with a whole lot less BS relationship fluff from other sources.

The social media echo chamber is just that. We talk to ourselves and our adherents and congratulate ourselves for all the blog mentions. But are we really getting the best results for our clients?

Using the tech industry as an example, a single recommendation of a website by Leo Laporte or his guests during TWiT orMac Break Weekly can instantly shut the site down. And he accepts no PR solicitations. I know of very few bloggers who can achieve this feat. Which goes back to the point that nuts-and-bolts, old-school, keep-a-stream-of-facts-coming-to-the-press PR is still the key to getting on the radar of the biggest influencers. They read the news, not you.

I will say that i believe in social media, relationship-based efforts for PR and I think a lot of the ideas out there are solid and need to be pursued. But when we do it at the expense of the not-so-glorious fundamentals of PR, we are essentially hamstringing the real potential of our public relations efforts.

Definitely look for more discussion of this on The BeanCast Marketing Podcast this week. The panel includes Peter Shankmanfrom Help a Reporter Out, so I expect this will be a pretty good discussion.

The Dry, Crusty, Cold Porridge Of Social Media

What do we do about LinkedIn?

We've discussed the business-focused social networking site a number of times on The BeanCast marketing podcast, but we've never really delved into why it's so often dismissed by so many of its users. I think Ben Kunz said it best with his description that became the title of this post. It does its job, but there's nothing to really get excited about.

Clearly it's easy to dismiss the service. But before we do, we have to consider that fact that LinkedIn really does have a lot going for it. Because whereas most social network participation is done purely by choice, LinkedIn has established itself as a necessity. You quite literally can't expect to be in the white collar job market today without a LinkedIn profile, and some employers will only consider candidates with 100% complete profiles (meaning, detailed information and recommendations from past associates).

For marketing consultants like me it's become an essential tool as well. Sending over a resume makes me a job seeker. But pointing people to my LinkedIn profile is a great way for people to get these facts in a much more engaging (and dare I say, less supplicating) format.

And how about those search rankings! Ever Google your name? If you have a LinkedIn profile, chances are it will be the first result. I don't know about you, but for me it's also consistently the top "search engine" for driving traffic to my site. How 'bout dem apples?

They're even making money! Two years in the black, according to founder, Reid Hoffman, with 2008 earnings that probably hit around $100 million.

And in a world of "we'll sell ads" business models, they have an actual plan in place that is working. They are generating money from premium accounts, job listings, and a handful of legitimate business advertisements. Imagine that! Charging for their services.

So why the rampant disregard? I would say it's three things:

People Don't Like Work

Some of you may love your job out there. But most of the rest of America doesn't. So expecting people to network on LinkedIn in the same way they do on Facebook or Twitter is akin to asking them to ski on asphalt -- you can do it, but what's the point?

Professionals know they need to network and even have fun doing it sometimes, but given the choice they would rather hang out with their friends and talk about the game or the family or gardening or something. So of course LinkedIn doesn't have the same "cool" factor as these other sites. It can't. It never was meant to be that engaging.

It Breaks the Rule of the "Free"

When's the last time you heard a social media "guru" praise LinkedIn? I can honestly say I've never heard it praised. Not even once. It's always presented in a "it has its place" sort of embarrassed, dismissive way. I've done it too. Which I'm now convinced is partly because it doesn't fit the models that we all are propagating.

You're not supposed to charge users! Only advertisers should be charged. But as M.M. McDermott pointed out via Twitter, "Everything's a personal advertisement on LinkedIn." So while the base service is free, the premium services are walled off for subscribers. It's an old model, but it works because the content and services offer measurable and money-making benefits. There's simply nothing for the social media hype machine to crow about.

It Remains Irrelevant Most of the Time

While it's strong among the jobless (Debbie Durst said at one recent LinkedIn event, 70% of the attendees were job seekers), even in "these tough economic times®" that still represents only about 11-15% of the population at large and many of the unemployed are blue collar. To the rest of us, its just something we periodically update (like a resume), but largely ignore. If there's one valid criticism out there about LinkedIn, it's this one. It's clearly a spot of untapped potential.

While they are definitely making money and deserve more credit than they get, they're leaving too much on the table. And I'm not talking chat rooms and status feeds, which we already know won't be used in this venue. I'm talking about things that can make it relevant to more areas of our professional lives.

Where are the training opportunities? (They should be the main conduit out there for online professional training.) Where is the active outreach to professional organizations to create and manage groups? (Having set up such a group, I can say they are definitely not addressing the questions, nor hand-holding the unique needs that such organizations have.) Where are the lead management systems? Where are the mobile apps that use the information in interesting ways, rather than just spitting out the website data. The list can go on and on.

LinkedIn is just what Ben Kunz says it is. It's crusty. It's cold. But clearly it can be much more than this. And that's what's most frustrating.

Brands That Suck

We've all thought it: "Wouldn't it be great to work on a brand like _________?"

Life would be so good then. We'd do killer strategies, use the latest technologies, craft award-winning creative and be set for life.

Meanwhile we slave over a brand that is terminally uncool, providing laxative-induced relief to senior citizens.

There's just no getting around it -- some brands suck. In fact, entire categories of brands can sometimes suck. Sucky work. Sucky reputation. Sucky prospects. Suck, suck, suck!

Sucky like...well...oh...wait a minute. Every sucky brand category I can think of has at least one example of good work.

I thought about cars advertising which is rife with by-the-book boring campaigns and still we have Mini and the original Saturn work. Or I think about the disclosure-as-copy world of pharmaceuticals and we still have Viagra. Even the sure-you-can-buy-this-house world of banking had those crazy folks at Washington Mutual.

Makes you wonder if brands suck or people do.

There's no doubt that no single person or even agency has enough clout to make a bad brand good. But your humble host ofThe BeanCast is reminded today that willingness to break the mold and reach your audience in new and meaningful ways is never limited by the product you sell.

What Billy Meant To Me

It's very easy to dismiss Billy Mays. He was loud. He was boisterous. He did things that most brand-based advertisers cringe over. And even your humble host of The BeanCast would have to admit that his style would have been ill-suited for the Applesand Nikes of the world.

But to dismiss him out of hand would be ignoring a few important truths about the man. And since we won't be recording a new episode of our marketing podcast this coming week, I thought it worthwhile to spend a few minutes honoring what was great about the master pitchman.

Billy Was Genuine

How often do we hear the word "genuine" these days? We hear about "trust agents" and "authenticity" until we're sick of the words. Yet prior to the popularity of the social networks that have brought this terminology into fashion again, Billy built this kind of genuine authority with his audience. He was a true trust agent. He could move from product to product without a blink and people immediately felt the claims were legitimate. And from this we learn again that building trust with your audience is not about the tools, but about the people using the tools.

Billy Understood His Tools

Even though Billy's true success resting in the man himself, he was undoubtedly a master of the tools he did use. He was one of the very few people alive who actually understood there is a dramatic difference between a long-form direct-response commercial and an infomercial. He knew that the pitch was different when you were live on Home Shopping and when you were recording a spot. He knew how to work the camera perfectly to affect emotional responses. And he was always telling a story that was right for his audience. In the world of direct response advertising, he was a master.

Billy Wasn't Afraid To Sell

If you read this blog, you've read what I have to say about this topic many times before. Billy knew that selling was part of the picture. And while he built up the appeal of a product, he always did so in a way that made it easy for people to buy. For all his shouting, he never berated. He was excited. And people became excited right along with him -- right to the point of pulling out their wallets.

Billy Was The Brand

Don't be fooled. Don't let anyone tell you that Billy didn't believe in branding. He just knew something that many of today's social marketing experts are just figuring out. Billy was the brand. Above any of the brands he represented, the people who bought were also buying into what he himself represented. That's the real secret behind the success of social marketing success stories like Zappos. It just seems cooler when Tony Hsieh builds his trust quietly on the Internet. But essentially there is no difference, because in the end we are buying into the mystique of Tony's vision as much as that of Zappos' product.

So rest in peace, Billy. I for one know that you knew a lot more about the business of marketing than many of the rest of us will ever hope to learn.

Where Are My Predictive Models

What do you think of when you hear the word, "Analytics?"

Again and again your humble host of The BeanCast hears about measurement and results and ROI and other ways to evaluate the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. And then occasionally I'll hear someone talk about using analytics to target a specific demo or zip code. But I rarely hear anyone on my marketing podcast or in my consultantcy or pretty much anywhere talk about how their models are being used to actually predict behavior.

What happened?

A Once Bright Future

I remember when I first entered into the marketing world, I was exposed to an arcane piece of math that seemingly put Einstein's theory of relativity to shame. To my please-no-math brain, I couldn't understand a bit of the equation. But when the benefits it represented were explained to me, my eyes lit up and I became a life-long evangelist right on the spot.

The model shown to me was called the Cultivation Opportunity Index Valuation model, created by Ward Thomas, an executive at the then Response Marketing Group, which after many reorgs and purchases has become EuroRSCG Discovery. This COI Valuation model (as it was called for short) could take a three-dimensional view of a customer based on three axes of data -- demographics (age, income, etc.), psychographics (interests, hobbies, predilections, etc.) and past purchase behavior. And what it would essentially do is tell us with a high-degree of accuracy what the lifetime value of each customer was.

Measuring Value Instead of Just Response

Notice that this wasn't just about response. This wasn't about just meeting immediate sales objectives. This model (and supporting models like it) essentially told us which individuals in the database represented the highest profits over time. So when we went out to market, we not only could reach or exceed our response objectives, we could also fine-tune our targeting to such a degree that we could achieve these goals with sometime 50% or less of the mail volume previously needed.

Unless you are VERY new to marketing, you'll understand that hitting your response numbers at 50% mail volume, can mean at least a 2x increase in revenue and usually much more, considering the reduction in hard costs.

A Neglected Gem

Yet even back then, when I heard a lot more about this type of modeling, it was hard to convince marketing managers that the investment was worth it. There was nothing tangible (or understandable, for that matter) they could take to their superiors for approval. And even if the investment was made, when the results came in it was the creative that took all the glory.

So true predictive modeling remains an arcane art, practiced well by a few and ignored by the majority of marketers. And it completely boggles my mind that a discipline that can show such solid return on investment is still over-shadowed repeatedly by the marketing darling du jour. It's time that we righted this ship.

Cool Tools Still Take Smart Humans

My consultancy, The Cool Beans Group, has recently been working with a client to evaluate social listening tools. And while I've been impressed at the ability to aggregate conversations and task follow-ups, it's become clear to me that automating these task may not always lead to the results you desire.

Now maybe a marketing podcast host doesn't offer the most neutral case study to examine. But The BeanCast aside, I feel I'm a fairly good judge of end-user experience. And I think that the research backs me up when I say that people in general feel pretty uncomfortable knowing their conversations are being examined.

I know the arguments. Social media means "public" and we need to know how our brands and the issues we face are being discussed in public venues. But there's no getting around that when someone posts a comment on Twitter, they still consider it to be their private thoughts that they are sharing with a group of private followers. It's irrational, it's unreasonable, but I dare you to think otherwise.

So when a brand comes out of the woodwork in a response to a comment you make on a forum or blog, it's a shocking thing, whether you are savvy about the tools that enable such interactions or not. People are naturally uncomfortable with it. So what you do with these few seconds after contacting someone in response to a comment is critical.

Instant Response Insanity

This is why I make the case that despite the "cool" factor of these tools, the key determining factor of their success is still the people who run them. I've made the case before that just because you can respond instantly, it doesn't always make it the best course of action. This was painfully obvious in my case.

During the presentation of one such tool, I tweeted a few of my thoughts. They were just some random impressions about how the tool was being displayed in light of my client's circumstances. Nothing earth-shaking, but I thought that people who follow me might benefit from a few insights.

Well, over the course of the next 24-hours I was bombarded with contacts from competitors and from the software in question. I also got lots of follows from other people at these companies who were obviously listening. And what was the predominant tone of the contacts? Argumentative.

Let me clarify that people were not rude or callous. All the contact were friendly enough. And I understand how sales works: You identify objections in your target, provide reasonable counters and show benefits. But that usually happens after building relationships. To have people coming out of nowhere in response to my comments trying to prove me wrong was...well...creepy!

I realize that these tools are cool and the best way to showcase how cool they really are is to show them in action. But the experience highlighted an essential flaw as well -- the tool is only as effective as the contact made. And no offense to the people in question (because I know they are still listening to me) in the hands of eager sales forces the exchanges were uncomfortable and downright embarrassing to me. I felt like I should have held my tongue and left my thoughts private.

For some reason, I don't believe that listening tools should be stifling conversation. Just a guess. But in my case, that's what was happening.

Listening To Listen Some More

The other thing that was quickly evident in these exchanges was how much my comments were misunderstood. Again and again I was approached by reps trying to convince me that "listening was important" or that I needed to be "listening to more than just my brand."

Now, I'll own that my 140 characters did a poor job of conveying the depth of my concerns, but I was surprised that there was such free reign to assume what the objections were without querying further. Not a single person/brand that contacted me asked me to clarify my concerns. We went directly from listening to talking. Which made me feel not listened to at all.

Again, I emphasize that I am no calling out the reps who contacted me because they were all courteous and kind. But it did highlight for me the need to use listening to do more listening.

The desire -- dare I say, "need" -- to use these tools for sales is obvious. You're laying a chunk of change down each year. You need to justify the expenditure with a direct correlation to closed business. But it can't be overlooked that if a tool is good for listening, then use it to listen.

A few simple questions of me would have revealed that my concerns were not over whether such tools were needed, but whether we needed such robust tools yet. My concerns ranged from our inability to even identify what search parameters we needed to be looking at yet to the fact that our searches were not yielding results all that different from Google Alerts. The value of listening and of the tool was evident -- we were simply feeling ill-prepared to get full value from them yet.

Creating a New Culture First

Now the reason I'm being so apologetic for the reps who have contacted me is because I honestly cannot say that we would have done any better if the roles had been reversed. If I had not had the experience I did, I would have probably remained oblivious to these insights until they were somehow pointed out to me. Which is why I'm more convinced then ever that successfully launching a listening program in any organization needs to be preceded by an internal cultural indoctrination.

Again and again on The BeanCast I've had PR people point out situations that the social media group think has called to the mat for not being responsive enough, that really needed no response at all. Motrin moms comes to mind, where the end result of the social uproar over their baby-wearing fiasco was...no one in the general public cared.

Knowing when and how to respond is vastly more important to a listening effort than the listening itself. Too many brands are diving into this space and making radical responses to teapot hurricanes -- pulling ad campaigns or making immediate and ill-advised statements, before understanding the true impact of the uproar. No tool is going to solve this. Only having the staff and advisors on hand to bring perspective will give organizations the true value of what social listening is all about.

So my ultimate point? Before you plug in the tool to the network, make sure you've selected the right people to plug into the tool.

Trusting The Press To Market For You

This is my week for marketing lessons, it seems. I was just confronted with another doozie after seeing the Pixar film UP and contrasting the film's pre-launch marketing with the pre-launch ad for the Palm Pre. My revelation is this: If your product is truly extraordinary, sometimes it's best to say as little as possible.

A Film Too Good For Words

Taking the afternoon off from my usual marketing podcast prep and promotional activities for The BeanCast, I went to see the new Pixar film, UP this week. Now, for months the film's approach to marketing has baffled me. I've seen every preview and wondered how a movie featuring an old man in a floating house could possibly be entertaining. And when the reviews from Cannes started coming out, I became even more baffled. People talked of tears and standing ovations and I looked at their little teaser campaigns and uninspiring trailers and asked, "This would make you cry!"

But then I saw the movie and choked back tears repeatedly, while laughing myself silly. It wasn't just a good animated film; it was the best film I've seen in years, period. High praise, I know, but there you have it.

Trusting in Gold

Then I suddenly understood why they marketed as they did. First, (and the lesser point, in my mind) there was no way to sell the emotional elements of aging in a children's film without actually seeing it first. It's just too big an issue to convince people that it's perfect for a kid's flick. But second, they knew exactly how good their film actually was. This second point is truly key. They knew in their hearts that few people could sit through this movie without tears welling in their eyes. It was a gamble on their part, but they had the wisdom to realize it was better to leave the actual selling of the movie's charm to the press and critics, rather than spoil the plot points with too much promotion.

Such tactics are not unheard of. Franchise movies like the latest Star Trek get away with it all the time. But it takes a truly special new IP to embrace this approach. One of the only one's I can remember that got away with this tactic in film marketing was the Penny Marshall film, Big. But when you're sure you have gold, it's the best possible means of marketing. It's an approach that relies nearly entirely on trusted sources to build your buzz -- news, critics, social buzz and the best friend raving about it.

But can Palm get away with it?

Throwing Away Conventional Wisdom

This is probably the single most important week in the history of Palm. They've bet their entire company's future on the successful launch of their new Pre smart phone. And the once dominant player in the smart phone category is now struggling to prove their relevance once more.

Conventional wisdom would say that they should be showcasing the user experience and all the cool things their new product does. There should be demonstration video and commercials a la iPhone app spots, that show interaction with the interface. They should be focused entirely on the product and telling us why it's great.

But instead, the first commercial they chose to reveal the new phone via a Facebook effort was this existentially beautiful, high-concept spot from agency Modernista:

Now my first reaction was, "WTF!" I mean, I get the spot and I think it's a brilliant visual representation of a living interface for your lifestyle, but the pragmatist in me said, "The core market of tech enthusiasts are going to mock the living crap out of this! Don't they listen to TWiT? Don't they watch Tekzilla? They'll be ruthless on this one."

Then I took a deep breath and the lesson I learned from UP came back to me. And the question occurred to me: "Could the Palm Pre really be that good?"

Bold Move or Desperation?

In product launches we always fall into the formula rut of selling features and trying to tie in benefits as an afterthought. But as tech advances, it becomes increasingly difficult to recreate just how good the user experience can be in any marketing materials. And the result is usually spots that simply get in the way of the single most important message point that needs to be made: 

That there's no way to describe how completely awesome this is -- you just have to try it.

And clearly the demonstration spot doesn't do squat for you anyway if your product sucks. Look at the Blackberry Storm. They did a great job of demonstrating how cool the device could be, but the reviews came back trashing the thing. And not a single person I've met with one has had anything but derision for the device.

So getting back to the Pre, I'm willing to go along with their approach for the moment. Maybe they do have something special. Maybe they should build hype alone, and rely on buzz to do the heavy lifting of selling the finer points of the user experience. But that user experience better be damn good. If it is, I'll be here praising their efforts all the louder. But if it's not, they won't just fail -- they will also be mocked as they fall. Because just like there are brilliant examples of subtle launches that created a sensation of positive press, the road is also littered with the bodies of products that never measured up to user expectations.

So my lesson for today, is don't be afraid to gamble and let your users drive your sales. Just make sure you're holding a set of aces when you play the hand.

Getting Personal With Personalities

Yesterday brought an interesting revelation to your humble marketing podcast host about creating social buzz: Offering the right personality can be just as important as offering the right promotion.

Henry Hatsworth Saves The Day

My thinking here began after interacting with someone on the marketing team of Henry Hatsworth from EA. I've briefly mentioned how impressed I was with their Twitter efforts on a recent episode of The BeanCast. (I'd offer a specific link, but I can't remember what episode off hand.) Instead of doing the usual product promotion/information approach to marketing, they've instead taken the main character from the game and created a Tweeting personality.

If you follow @henryhatsworth you are treated to the English gentleman's saucy insights into how to play the game. What's more, the personality interacts with fans and is creating community. And yes, there are even give-aways, but done in a manner that is completely in keeping with the character.

Extending The Illusion For Brand Value

This approach works on so many levels! It creates loyal advocates for the brand, it inspires news sales of the product and it even provides a friendly avenue of customer service. Plus, it showcases a truth we've advocated on The BeanCast for some time: People want to interact with people. Even an obviously made up and fun person is better than a faceless corporate peon.

The genius in EA's effort is that it understands the true value of social marketing is in brand enhancement -- and for video games in particular, this is key. So much depends on the power of "franchises" in that industry and building a brand that gets people talking is essential to future growth for new IPs.

Positioned To Seize Opportunities

But my praise goes even further. I had a brief interaction with the EA person running the account yesterday and I was further impressed by his/her (I'll go with the masculine since it is "Henry") judgment calls in managing the account. During a promotion to give away the game at E3, I contacted him and told him he should give the game to me instead, because I wanted it more. It was really just a joke, but he took time to look at my follower count and gauged me to be an influencer because I was a podcast host. This resulted in a candid, out-of-character DM that said he wanted to send the game to me anyway, since a lot of people followed me. It was a chance for them to get the game in the hands of someone who might publicly talk about it.

Brilliant!

They've basically made me, an average player, into a game reviewer -- and a reviewer who is already predisposed to them, since I've obviously already been following their Henry character. They've probably done this dozens, if not hundreds of times. And the result is this new IP is getting talked up in the game forums, Twitter and the other places where most gamers are getting their decision information these days.

Finding Your Personality

Now it's agreed that not every company has a cute little character to shuffle out. But it doesn't always take a mascot. Look around your office. Who is the person that EVERYONE loves to interact with? Well, for goodness sakes, set them up with a Twitter account! It's essentially no different than what Snapple did with "Wendy" way back in the day. Same with Reynold's Wrap's "Pat and Betty." It didn't hurt or radically change these brands or what they stood for to bring personality into play. It just made the brands richer, more personal and more approachable.

So what I'm saying is, if the CMO is not the right person to be tweeting give the job to the receptionist. Heck, let people know it's the receptionist interacting. What's the harm? These social mediums don't always need to be about inside information and top-level access. Sometimes warmth and humanity offer a much better recipe for bolstering your overall marketing success.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Social media marketing is public customer service. You don't hire telephone reps because they personify the brand. You hire the best ones because they are personable, friendly, patient and helpful. So why not put these kinds of people on public display as visible representations of the people that make your company great? It's a powerful testimonial that far too many brands are squandering.