The Personal Branding Debate

I was impressed that Forrester had the audacity and guts to tackle the Personal Branding question on their blog today, especially given their own recent troubles on that front. Although Augie Ray's post didn't immediately address their own troubles in regard to analysts leveraging Forrester fame to jump ship, he obviously anticipated the question. You can read both my question and his response in the comments section of the post.

But all this led me to offer a follow-up thought on the personal branding debate. Here's where I stand, complete with A/V clip:

I find this fascinating. It's so interesting to look at the Forrester case as a self-contained experiment on the problem as a whole, because both the benefits and liabilities are so obviously exposed within your organization.

So much of the Forrester model is built on having rock star analysts. Sure, there's the reputation of the company to uphold, but it's the personalities and specific research of the individual analysts' that drive the calls and dollars. You're a bit like a professional sports team -- everyone is out to win as a team, but the reputation of specific players drive ticket sales. And just like with sports teams, ultimately those players know their value and leverage the team as a launching pad for their own endorsement deals, contract negotiations and even team moves.

The question is, is such a model a double edged sword that is dangerous but necessary in today's business, or is encouraging such activity always beneficial to the company despite the risk of investing in talent who may ultimately leave for a competitor?

David Byrne of Talking Heads fame, had a film called True Stories in the early 90's [I was wrong...it was 1986] that contains a fairly prophetic stance on this topic. In the scene, Earl Culver, played by Spaulding Gray, delivers this speech:

"Most middle-class people have worked for large corporations like Vericorp or for the government itself. But now, all that's started to change. Scientists and engineers are moving off from those larger corporations, like Vericorp. And they're beginning to start their own businesses, marketing new inventions...But It all spins back to the middle...that's why we have to keep these guys in Virgil. Even though they do leave Vericorp.

"For the time being it's create confusion and chaos. They don't work for money anymore, but to earn a place in heaven, which was a big motivating factor once upon a time, believe you and me. They are working and inventing because they like it! Economics has become a spiritual thing. I must admit it frightens me a little bit. They don't seem to see the difference between working and not working. It has all become a part of one's life. Linda! Larry! There's no concept of weekends anymore!"

Obviously this is over the top, but the core of the speech completely and accurately predicted the entire dot-com boom. And more importantly, it predicted how the big companies just needed to let the innovation happen, then either learn from the innovations or buy the best of those start-ups and absorb them back into the fold. (Not withstanding a few notable companies like Google that became giants themselves.)

I think this model is just as relevant today when applied to the personal branding question. There are obviously risks to giving employees public, social platforms of expression. After all, in these instances we are no longer just investing in what an employee can do for the organization, but investing in their own stature as an individual. We also must be concerned that they may indeed use such platforms for self-advancement or transfer this fame to their personal efforts. But we also have to accept that by not allowing individuals to shine within an organization, we lose the benefit of their inventiveness. And by burning bridges with them when they open a personal blog or decide to leave, we lose the opportunity to possibly re-absorb them into the organization later as an even more valuable asset.

I fully believe that most of the concerns over employees advancing their personal brand in tandem with the corporate brand they are tasked to promote is simply a product of short-sighted thinking. If we're truly afraid of our own brilliant employees jumping ship, then we should be doing more to either hire more loyal people or create additional reasons for them to stay. Ultimately that would be a better use of resources than trying to suppress the flood of personal expression our workers are dying to give us.

What are your thoughts on personal branding and corporate response?

The Social Game Dilemma

In the gung-ho world of social engagement, it's hard not to get excited whenDisney invests over half a billion dollars in a social gaming company. Instantly one's brain starts to click with the marketing potential. As any marketer (or economist, for that matter) knows, commerce is essentially a game. And the more we introduce interesting and relevant mechanics to inspire game-like behavior, the more engaged a targeted customer will become. It would seem a given that blending the worlds of marketing and social gaming would be a winning formula — no pun intended.

Yet, as my guests on this past week's episode of The BeanCast

 so skillfully pointed out, that blending may be harder to achieve than would seem immediately evident. Just as product placement in films is subject to the inconsistent whims of producers and writers who may or may not be on board with the effort, so too game developer buy-in (or even skill) may greatly affect outcomes. Then add in the newness of the platforms and the lack of proven case studies and you quickly uncover the risks of involving a brand in the space.

As was mentioned on the show, some tie-ins are born winners. The example of Miracle Grow being introduced to Farmville as a beneficial fertilizer was particularly notable. But such tie-ins are few and far between and as Mike Monello noted, it would be better for a brand to build a social game from the ground up than to inhabit a space with so much uncertainty.

Which brings up the case of location-based social games like Foursquare and Gowalla and the topic that started the show.Forrester says wait, when it comes to most brands involving themselves in such platforms. The panel agreed for the most part, though offered the insight that even Twitter and Facebook were insignificant 4 years ago. 

So what do we do?

There was an interesting point made during the show that may have been overlooked. Jeffrey Hayzlett quoted Sheldon Adelson (the man behind COMDEX) who said to him once, "Attendees beget exhibitors and exhibitors beget attendees."

Clearly if we want a social gaming experience to be a powerful platform for marketing, we have to be willing to invest in the platform itself. That means advertising and promoting our commitment and involvement on the platform to our customers at the same time we're marketing to users already on the platform. It also means moderating our expectations in anticipation for future returns. And it means doing all this carefully with a clear exit strategy.

But ignoring the opportunities of the platform completely until it's fleshed out would be like Microsoft saying that COMDEX was too risky to participate in during the 80s. Such a move in hindsight would have been foolish. So too, we have to at least recognize that there is a natural synergy between marketing, social networking and games. That synergy is worth some cautious exploration at the very least.

Ideas Drive True Growth

Ever notice how financial brands are starting to view themselves as more important than the products or services they represent? I hate to get all "in-my-day" here, but some recent statistics I saw have highlighted for me what the true impact of this shifting focus really means.

Did you know that the single greatest input to the Gross National Product (GNP) for the US last year was the business of making money? 

At 21.4% of the GNP, financial services is far and away our biggest contribution, almost doubling the nearest measurable sector. And if we
look at the assets they own, financial institutions really account for about 60% of the GNP. While I have no complaints about banks making money (they have been clients and I am a strident proponent of open markets), this news showcases for me how the entrepreneurial spirit in this country has lost its way.

Why did you get into advertising or marketing? If you're like me, you did it to sell ideas — not just creative ideas, but the new ideas of your clients. I became a marketer to position the exciting new inventions and reformulations and service offerings of my clients. And I did it to get an audience thrilled about buying into these ideas. That's where marketing gets exciting and fun. It's the real foundation of the American business spirit.

Yet if the numbers can be believed, our biggest sellable focus in this country has shifted away from ideas to formulas. We don't make money and drive success by innovation anymore. We make money by having our existing money make more money.

Again, no complaint from me on the value of investing. However, this changing focus from ideas being the driving force of profit generation to ideas being the disposable fodder of investing I find troubling. 

I could wax poetic on the failings of this mindset — how it's destroying the pysche of America, much as turn-of-the-century factories and mills virtually enslaved workers to the system and crushed innovation in favor of profit. But more often than not the underlying problem all comes down to the company viewing its own well-being as more important than the customer's. 

No company is perfect and profits are always of primary concern for any corporation, but when a brand becomes more about it's own profit than about solving customer problems we start down a dangerous road. When products and services become the after-thought of the equation of profitability, we negate the substance of ideas. We are selling air. And as any hustler will tell you, there's only so long you can sell air before someone figures it out and comes after you with a shotgun.

There is a place for pure and simple money making through investment to be sure. The financial institutions out there play a vital part in the growth of the economic picture. But when the GNP of a country is weighted this far in favor of money-making, we are clearly stifling the risk-taking necessary to promote new and innovative ideas. 

What are your thoughts on this? Am I over-reacting here? Should the banks be holding on to their cash to weather the storm or freeing up loans for innovation? I admit freely that I am not a numbers guy, so I'd appreciate the insights.

And for the record, I have good credit with my banks, so thanks for investing in me.

Throw-Away Conversation

It's easy for me to forget that The BeanCast Marketing Podcast is having an impact. Lost in the details of show prep, guest scheduling and surrounding conversation, I rarely get accurate glimpses of what the audience thinks about the show and about me. That's why this post by D.A. Schweiss caught me off guard. 

Yesterday I asked the audience (half jokingly, mind you) to handle my promotion since I would be traveling. Dieter took me up on this challenge, though, and spent the day promoting my links. Then, rounding off the day he wrote the above piece, pulling some quotes from my own past blog posts that make me look pretty darn good. 

Obviously I was humbled by the experience. But I also learned an important lesson about conversational marketing: Everything we say is important. Every interaction, every thought and every details matters. Dieter even specifically called out my video game and family tweets as an important part of the whole that made me interesting to follow. That fact is not inconsequential.

Most of us would negate such idle chatter as video game talk — this "throw-away" conversation — as worthless distraction from our focused efforts online. But Dieter's post shows that it added unquantifiable color to the aggregate whole of my promotional efforts. It may have even been the driving force that inspired his advocacy on my part yesterday. So while on the surface it is disposable chatter, in the end it's what really drove loyalty.

Take this message to heart, you who manage brands online: People don't have relationships with brands, they have relationships with people who work at those brands and with fellow brand loyalists. So how are you coloring these relationships with real and meaningful personality?

Social Is A Media, Not A Tactic

I got a great question the other day via email. Mike Johnston wondered why so many of the guests "..have such a difficult time describing the principles of creating an effective social media campaign for a brand." 

In his estimation, "It’s the purest form of brand advertising I’ve ever seen...I’m always amazed at how many advertising professionals aren’t able to articulate how/why it works. I don’t want to come off negative because I really like your show, but could you invite on a guest to discuss the basics."

I thought I'd share a slightly edited version of my answer:

Well, trouble is I've invited on the show all the real experts I respect the most and I get somewhat different answers from each, so I don't think there are any true "basics" to share yet, per se. However, as I've articulated on my blog a few times, the aggregate answer is that there are two ways to look at social: As a media you buy or as a slow-build opportunity to encourage advocacy.
In the first camp, we find the branders and the sellers using social networks for pushing out a message in a personal way. Whether that's a brand or a "buy-now" push, it essentially comes down to a numbers game, just like any other media. The more folks you reach, the more chances you have to make an impact. And the more targeted and engaged the audience is, the more likely they will be to hear you.

In other words, social influencer strategies are about "buying" (literally or figuratively) an audience to make an impression, much as traditional media buyers purchase time on a prime time show. The only perceived advantage is that the social audience is probably going to be more engaged with a message coming from someone they respect.
In the second camp, we find those who are infusing a transparency throughout an organization and encouraging conversation around the brand, usually initiated by the customer, but always nurtured by the brand. The object is to do whatever possible to encourage and nurture true advocates for the brand so that they end up sharing your message with honest enthusiasm for the product. It tends not to rely on tricks that create false conversation centered on a promotion. It's more about finding advocates who are already expressing appreciation and giving them more reasons to do so. 
Both are valid approaches but very different, and it behooves a brand to understand these differences before initiating a social campaign. The first requires critical mass in terms of followers and can be achieved by buying the attention of a few folks with a million followers. The second is a slow build that relies on persistent relationship building and one-on-one engagement. And the approaches can be blended together to a certain extent as well, so they are not exclusive to each other. But they need to be recognized as separate initiatives with different goals.

Social is being lumped as a single "discipline" and that serves no one well. It's like saying TV is all about branding, when DRTV also uses the medium of television effectively. Social media is a media, not a strategy, and the tactics you employ will define the type of outcome you receive.
At least that's where I land on things. I would say this more on the show, but I try not to grandstand. It makes for a better program to just let the guests take center stage.

Hope this helps a few people to understand social tactics a little better and maybe sparks some conversation on the subject.

Why We Promote Others

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One of the unusual aspects of HumongoNation, the self-promotional tour organized by Connecticut agency Humongo, is how little self-promotion they do. They literally travel the country searching for other agencies and businesses to promote, with nary a word about their own agency.

So here's how it goes: They gets sponsors, they roll around the country in a borrowed Ford Flex, they stop by businesses, they shoot video, then post the video. Rinse and repeat.

How can this be good business?

Seeing that The BeanCast Marketing Podcast has a very similar strategy of promoting others in order to promote ourselves, I thought it would be interesting to get the Humongo take on it. So I took the opportunity before they interviewed me, to interview their president, Darryl Ohrt, and find out how he approaches this different flavor of self-promotion.

Luxury and eCommerce

The subject of luxury brands embracing e-commerce sparked a lot of discussion this week. On The BeanCast itself, via Twitter and on the blog comments of the show notes there was vigorous debate about the ultimate effect of such a move.

While the guests on the show largely sided toward it being a good move, some listeners disagreed, feeling that ultimately a luxury brand demands personal touch and in-store experience to drive sales. There was also concern that e-commerce diminishes the brand value and distracts online searchers who are researching more than shopping.

My own thoughts tend to side more toward the opinions of my guests. Here's why.

Creating The Real Brand Experience
One of the points during the show was that these luxury brands are often at the mercy of the stores they are displayed in. Merchandising efforts aside, a snide salesperson can kill a brand experience. 

Until e-commerce there was very little a brand could do to create a buying experience that they would like the customer to have. The could affect image and value, but not that moment when money is exchanged. And that moment is a key thing that a consumer remembers.

Having an online store gives the brand that kind of opportunity. Even if the customers prefer to go into a store to purchase, having a presentation of what buying a product should be like helps a customer differentiate between the product brand and the store brand. So when the store clerk sneers down her nose, the customer is less likely to hold that against the brand. 

Never Hamper Intent to Buy
A key concern expressed this week was that since luxury brands demand more consideration, an e-commerce effort might be short-circuiting the true experience and lead to more dissatisfaction and returns. But I would suggest that online shoppers of luxury products are either discount searchers (looking for closeouts or last year's merchandise and don't want to be bothered by department store attitudes) or loyalists who know what they want from the brand and want it now. So in either case, not having a store hampers intent to buy. It's just silly not to have a digital storefront.

I would agree, however, that from a consideration standpoint the online store will most likely not move much product. Which is why a luxury brand initiating an e-commerce effort should be clear about their strategy. We can't assume that an online luxury brand store is only about purchase. So the research and content portion of the effort cannot be short-changed. 

Even though there is opportunity to buy immediately, the store should also be heavily moving customers in the direction of physical stores. This is not just to keep department store partners happy, but may also be an acknowledgment to customer preference.

Vision For The Future
The biggest road block for luxury e-commerce is, of course, department store partners. Going into competition with your partners is usually not a good idea. However, given what I said above, it's highly unlikely that an online luxury store will significantly reduce sales through physical stores. If done right, it may even grow sales with an online presentation that offers a focus on buying rather than just consideration.

But all that aside, e-commerce sometimes leads to even bigger and better things. Apple launched an e-commerce effort right about the time Steve Jobs returned and there was much consternation among partners. Entire catalog businesses and retail partnerships had been built and were now in jeopardy. 

Yet the move actually helped focus the brand experience and led to Apple realizing they needed the department store relationships less than they needed control of the customer. This led to elimination of most retail partnerships and opening of Apple stores. And no one could claim this was a bad move for them.

Such drastic moves may not be right for every high-end brand, but ignoring possibilities is the sure path to mediocrity.

So thanks to all the listeners that weighed in this week. I appreciate the debate.

Disclosure Overload

This morning, Len Kendall, past guest on The BeanCast and co-founder of the3six5 project, posed a question on Posterous: Should the need for disclosure also extend to when you discuss a client's competitor?

Len proposed a tag similar to what is currently adopted for clients. When someone posts a positive statement about a client we use the tag #client. So maybe when talking about a competitor we should use a similar tag like #competitor.

It's a great point. But then Matt Ridings, of Social Fresh fame, pointed me toward a post he wrote about how even the basic disclosure is still overlooked. His point is that we need to be more proactive about self-policing all our tweets to be disclosing clients.

That's when it hit me that all of this is madness.

To be clear, I agree in heart with both of these men and I respect them greatly. I also need to state adamantly that active deception is unacceptable. (Matt's example of running both sides of a brand conversation with a fake customer is particular reprehensible.) But are we really responsible for disclosing each and every tweet that comes out?

The guidance from many lawyers is that the safe thing to do is disclose everything. But for me the heart of the issue is whether we should consider Twitter, Facebook or other social venues as a series of independent statements, or a conversation that is being archived on a Web site?

Twitter, even in its own promotional tagline, says, "Join the Conversation." So if this is a conversation, is it enough to disclose once during a conversation or are we responsible for each individual, potentially retweetable statement that we make? 

In almost any other media, one disclosure in the course of a conversation would be enough. For instance, on a blog we wouldn't need to disclose our client affiliation in every comment on a blog post that already disclosed the relationship. Or in a TV interview we wouldn't need to do more that state our affiliation up front, at the end of the conversation or just have a lower-third graphic that appears for a few seconds. There is a tacit acceptance in all other media that a conversation is taken as a whole, and a single disclosure per conversation is all that is needed. So why should we treat Twitter or Facebook any differently.

Obviously this is a simplification of a very complex issues. For instance, I wouldn't go so far as to say that one disclosure on your Twitter account is enough, forever and ever, amen. But shouldn't one disclosure per active conversation with another Twitter user be enough? 

The current understanding of the FTC's nebulous guidance is troubling and demands some active challenges. To me it's a clear example of a government body misunderstanding the context of what it's regulating, and advertisers being fearful of running afoul of regulations they don't understand. 

What are your thoughts on the issue? I'd love to keep this debate going.

An Interview With Kevin Briody

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The social space is littered with big personalities. Plenty of folks have gotten in early, built up huge followings and are now leveraging their popularity as a launching pad for clients to get the same buzz. For them, popularity has become the calling card for credibility in the social space.

And yet there are so many folks whom you may have never heard of, actively working behind the scenes on social marketing campaigns, delivering tangible results for clients. Are they any less of an expert than their more visible counterparts?

Kevin Briody, Strategic Partnership Director at Ignite Social Media, doesn't think so. Over lunch he shared some compelling thoughts about why a person doesn't need to be a popular blogger or have 40,000 Twitter followers in order to be a strong asset to a client in the social space. Further, he posits that the two approaches are vastly different in terms of what the client gets from each — one often being closer to a media buy, as opposed to getting targeted strategic help.

So click on the AudioBoo I recorded on the subject at the top of this page. I hope you get as much from this as I did.

Don't Forget The Icon

We can pump thousands of dollars in man-hours and development time for a promotional application for a mobile platform. We may even try to make it a good app, with a solid user-interface, really cool functionality and a problem-solving focus. So why do so many apps cheap out on the icon?

This question arose recently as I contemplated the HootSuite icon for iPhone. Maybe it's just me, but that icon is so darn cute, is so beautifully created in composition and pops so brilliantly with an obviously upgraded resolution for the iPhone 4, that it is impossible to ignore on the screen. I have to press it. I sometimes don't even want to check Twitter and I still find myself pressing that icon.

Which led to the realization that many app developers are leaving a huge opportunity on the table.

Think about it: The app button is no different than a subject line of an email, a graphic element in a print ad or a sentence in a Johnson Box (that little block of text next to the address block on a direct mail letter). We spend hours crafting just the right picture or sentence to entice the consumer to delve a little deeper and discover what's inside. So an app should be doing the same.

Yet most apps seem to think of their icon as an afterthought. I mean sure, it's not much space and you can't message like crazy, but this is still the first thing the consumer sees. This is what they will repeatedly see on the screen. So why not make it irresistible to press?

Branded apps are particularly guilty of this. I'm not saying the Target app or the WalMart app or even the Chipotle app icons on the iPhone are ugly. They aren't. What I am saying is that
as a billboard to entice me into clicking, they are severely lacking. They don't achieve anything except a brand impression, and a poor one at that. They certainly don't compel me to find out what lies behind that picture.

We are simple animals at heart, we humans. We are attracted to things like symmetry, color, resolution and composition. It doesn't really take that much to catch our eye. But we know the minimum when we see it. And all that money you've spent on the guts of your app will be wasted if your icon says nothing more than the minimum it promises.