The Problem With PR Prose

For some time I've wondered why people don't get annoyed by me promoting myself on Twitter. Admittedly some people probably do get annoyed, but since they never tell me so, I guess it doesn't matter.

But back to the point, I promote myself every bit as much as the worst spammy PR offender on Twitter. I mean my stream is filled with links back to my blog posts and to The BeanCast and to Ad Age Outlook and I really can't say it's any less egregious than any other PR flack promoting their wares.

Yet, time and time again I'm specifically called out by people saying, "You do it right." And I'm like, "What am I doing right?" To which they say, "You just aren't as annoying." To which I reply, "I am annoying, but thanks anyway."

It's been a conundrum.

But then this evening it hit me. And the insight came in an unusual way. I was promoting Ad Age Outlook's latest episode and decided a good way to do such was to make fun of Ad Age Managing Editor Ken Wheaton's "nubbin." (His inappropriate name for the small piece of text that accompanies each posting.) So I wrote a fun tweet, posted it and immediate people started engaging with it. And I finally got why people are up in arms over PR spammers yet willingly allow me to spam them:

CONTENT!

Okay, duh! But seriously, too many PR folks in their efforts to be informational and professional have forgotten that advertising is supposed to be fun and/or to get people talking. The best ads are creatively thought out, carefully executed masterpieces. They aren't just informational. They are little entertainments.

Further, we don't just run our ads back to back. We look at complex formulas to determine reach and frequency, not just dump a bunch of links with an auto-blast. Free bandwidth has crippled our sensibilities about timing.

In short, I don't just tweet interesting links. I attempt to craft everything I say like a copywriter forming an ad and launch it with the timing of a campaign. And that's the difference.

So to you PR folks out there, love you, but the medium demands something more interesting. It may be worth taking a page from the ad agency playbook before your next Tweeting session.

ESRB Comments As Promotion

I've noticed an interesting trend in reporting on new video games. The hunger for new information is so great in this market, that writers (bloggers especially, but often the game press as well) will latch onto comments in ESRB press releases (Electronic Software Ratings Board) for clues as to a game's content. And since these releases will either come prior to hands-on experience with a game or supersede embargoed knowledge, they make excellent fodder for content.

Here's the rub, though. Can game marketers be looking more closely at this trend as a marketing opportunity?

This insight comes from a series of recent tweets from a Kotaku.com writer about an upcoming game. In the tweets about an ESRB press release, it was revealed the game had received an M rating (mature) for "shooting people in the buttocks."

Now I don't know about you, but that reeks of studio involvement. A ratings board alone would have probably said, "excessive violence." But this specific hint as to what the game is like intrigues gamers and makes people laugh. It adds character and dimension to a game. It's something to talk about. And it creates pass-along buzz.

And it's smart marketing.

If I was a game studio marketer, I'd always be looking at the ESRB submission paperwork and seeding it with "descriptively creative" explanations of the game, to help seed more such commentary. It's a slam-dunk social strategy.

Now if you excuse me, I've got some buttocks to shoot.

Whom Do You Serve?

I received an interesting insight last night about Human Resources that I think may apply to just about everything we do in marketing as well.

I pointed out to an HR professional (who shall remain nameless) that his/her job must be hard because no one really trusts HR. I meant it mostly as a joke, but for a moment this person paused and got introspective, then said a truly insightful thing:

"I don't think there are a lot of people in my field who would admit to this, but I think people distrust HR because in most organizations HR serves management first, rather than the associate."

How painfully true is this?!?

HR is a divided house. Ostensibly they are there to serve the needs of the employee, but in reality it is HR that shows up with the manager to deliver a pink slip. They work for management first and foremost and that makes it difficult to present themselves as a trusted confidante or benefit to the employee.

But here's the kicker: The same can be said about brands and marketing.

If accounting has a prime function of maximizing bonuses for management and customer service is all about resolving complaints quickly to get the customer off the phone, why should the customer believe marketing when it tells them, "We're all about you!"

I've said for months on this blog, that every function within a company needs to serve a single identity. A job may not seemingly touch a customer and it may have many tasks not associated with the customer, but it still needs to serve the brand vision that is going out to the customer first and foremost. And this is especially true today, when the ubiquity of customer commentary and reviews can have monumental consequences. Every task needs to serve the brand first and foremost. If it doesn't it becomes a weak link that may break the whole operation under pressure.

So while we talk about customer touch points, what about the points touching those touch points? Is the sales associate being empowered by HR with the tools needed to be a solid example of the brand? Is the IT department equipping the smartest resources for helping that brand be communicated? It's all important to the identity of the company. Cause in the end, the company is there to serve the customer. If that's not part of your brand vision, then you have even bigger problems than this post can address.

A Surprised And Delighted Customer

How is that Apple gets it right?

We can talking again and again about "God Jobs," as George Parker calls him. We can talk about a strong brand and simple, functional and beautiful product design. We can even talk about in-store customer experience. But the success of Apple for me constantly comes back to to the fact that they empower their people to make common-sense decisions.

Yesterday I walked into an Apple Store. The battery door on my laptop wouldn't close and it seemed that the battery was starting to Torque. Instantly the sales associate recognized that the battery was expanding and upon consultation I was told it was leaking and needed to be replaced.

"That'll be $129."

"Excuse me?" I asked.

This wasn't just a battery going bad after a year and half of use. This was a battery on the verge of exploding. And he wanted ME to pay for it?

It seemed I was at an impasse. I understood that it was out of warranty. I knew that they had no obligation to me. But an exploding battery was class-action-lawsuit territory.

So off he went to fetch the battery as I dug into my pocket for a credit card. That's when he arrived back with the new battery and a smile.

"My manager says this isn't supposed to happen to a battery. So we're just gonna replace it for free."

Hallelujah! Sanity!

And that's the essence of my point. When employees are afraid they will be fired for breaking the rules, despite all common sense to the contrary, I walk out of the store and write a much different blog post. I cause irreparable brand damage and tarnish the image of brand. But when a store manage recognizes that for $129 part (that probably cost them $60 to make) he can buy immeasurable good will, future sales and possibly word of mouth impact, the outcome is much different.

This is why I hammer home the point that marketing is not just in the hands of marketing. The best operations understand that you need every arm of an organization actively participating in the brand building and sales driving process. Product needs to be designing items that people want to buy. Customer service needs to be embracing and rewarding loyalty. Accounting still needs to see late payers as future advocates. It's all part of a single experience to the customer, so why break it up within the organization?

My history with Apple is a string of such events. I've had a customer service rep transfer me to a warehouse in Texas where a manager there actively rooted through boxes for my part. There were no "we can't do that" answers. Of course they could do this. They just needed to choose to do it.

It's time that business stops siloing and starts realizing that their customers will touch multiple parts of a company during their lifecycle. And every stop along that route is as important as the ad that first draws them in.

Why Smaller Can Be Better

Recently a social photo sharing site came online that limited friends to 50 people per user. The social network, called Path, launched under the premise that you can only really have a close relationship with 50 people. So it made you think deliberately about who those 50 people would be and limited you to only those people as your friends.

Obviously there was much criticism. In fact, we criticized it roundly on The BeanCast in episode 129. And while I'm not necessarily going back on my comments about a site that forces friend limits, the premise of being socially selective may actually be more valuable than we realize.

Too many of us have entered the new social networking sphere holding onto an old idea — the thought that success is always measured by the amount of response. We envision rating points and business reply cards and think that social media success needs to be measured in similar ways. Success is equated to scale. The more responses or retweets or likes, the more measurably successful our social program is. And certainly, this is one valid way to measure effectiveness. But the very idea of "being social" also provides another metric of success that is harder to measure — the quality of the engagement — and not only is this a valuable metric to have, it could also be desirable enough form the entire strategic objective of some programs to be built around it.

I'm taking part in the MarketingProfs Content Marketing Crash Course this week. (Yes, that's my affiliate link.) For my session on Wednesday, December 8th at 2pm ET, I'll be talking about content as a networking tool. And in preparing for this, I've come up with a way of explaining what I do with The BeanCast. In a nutshell: I have created the most exclusive and effective social network in advertising.

In fact, my social network is so exclusive that only about 96 people have ever been allowed to participate. But these 96 individuals represent the most influential voices in marketing, key members of the advertising press, ad bloggers of note and rising stars in marketing thinking. I've provided these people with a forum that exists nowhere else. There is simply no other place where people of such stature can meet and debate the latest news and trends in advertising on a regular basis. This forum provides not just an outward platform, but opportunities to meet and network with each other as well. Deals are struck, products are promoted and jobs are found.

Of course I can still look at The BeanCast as a show that a few thousand people listen to each week. But when I consider the smaller, more targeted audience of the participants, then I find the real value of what I am doing.

The BeanCast is not just about promotion and mass appeal. Frankly, the subject matter is far too niche for the mass side of the equation to ever value-justify the work that goes into the program. (It's 10-15 hours a week, by the way.) But the networking opportunities are invaluable. It's led to an entire chapter just about me in Content Rules. It's lead to numerous paid speaking and teaching engagements. It's lead to credibility that has landed me paying clients. And now, as I contemplate a few opportunities before me, it's possibly leading me to a whole new career path.

To make this simple, if I had measured the success of my content purely based on the number of show downloads, I would have killed the program long ago. But by always keeping my focus on the value of networking, I derived value beyond any hopes I had for my efforts.

So my advice today is that as you develop content, always start with understanding all the possible objectives. Because on the social web, engagement holds much more value than that of raw impressions.

Branding Directly

The battle between direct and brand is age old. On one side you have solid metrics and clear profitability. On the other you have looser metrics, but high emotional value that can swing sales your way for decades. Each has value in the marketing chain. But they remain like oil and water.

Direct adherents are so ruled by the

effectiveness

of the program that they will often myopically ignore long-term value in exchange for immediate gain. Meanwhile, brand adherents will feverishly resist the bastardization of the image effort and will willingly leave sales opportunity on the table in exchange for memorability and good will with the customer.

Then along came digital.

I'm reading a fascinating white paper from Ad Age Insights called Building Brands Online. The paper itself is an amalgam of many of the stories and stats we've covered ourselves over the last year here on The BeanCast. However, seeing it all together in one place is crystallizing a vision for both the need to blend the disciplines of direct and brand in our planning and what that would look like.

If we've learned one thing from the last 15 years of marketing in the digital space, it's that interaction is branding. The quality of a customer experience can dramatically alter perceptions and receptivity of both brand and sales messaging. So understanding how to create a desired action and memorable experience is essential to branding in the digital world — and direct provides the essential toolbox for doing this.

I won't try to recreate the entirety of the whitepaper. I'll let you form your own opinions. But it is interesting to me that the digital tactics we get most excited about these days (Blendtec, the Old Spice guy, etc.) are examples of branding married to interaction and response. And the agencies and marketers who understand this will clearly dominate the next decade.

Drive To Disappointment

"To see the the rest of the story, go to YouTube.com/disappointment."

I understand the desire to have a transmedia focus. I also understand the desire to turn a client's advertising effort into a viral phenomenon. But there's something that fundamentally bothers me with the "rest-of-the-story" approach that most advertisers take with YouTube.

In my world, a call-to-action needs to have purpose. Not necessarily a sale, mind you. But every call-to-action should amp up the engagement at the very least. There are always exceptions, but I'd say these are rare.

Now take the average rest-of-the-story approach. We're driven to YouTube by the TV commercial to get an extended video play that promises to complete the story. Then usually we're treated with the option to click yet again — or worse, type in the url for some other site — to get more information about the product. Sometimes the experience is entertaining. Sometimes it's a waste of time. That's irrelevant. The point is...well...what was the point?

I'm the average consumer. I follow your call-to-action because I like your spot and I'm perhaps even vaguely interested in your product. I end up on YouTube and rack up a click for you that you can trot in front of the client or your bosses as an "engagement metric." And then I'm rewarded with a chance to click once again? Talk about diminishing returns!

Every subsequent click is a subset percentage of the audience before it. So even with an extraordinary 10% click through, you've taken a large audience of hand-raisers (say 100,000 folks) and taken them down to a not-so-large audience (10,000 folks) by the time you finish. How is this smart marketing?

Understand, I'm all for moving people from couch-potato to engaged über-fan. I like the idea of incorporating YouTube into the call-to-action. But use the medium to its advantage, folks. The online video can be interactive and could be used to set up a call back. The online video can make a specific, clickable offer. The online video can even apply contextual ads for local vendors of your product. Something!

When YouTube — or any other microsite or social network — is specifically called out as part of the campaign, make it part of the campaign, not just an exercise in meaningless metrics. The opportunity is there. Make it work for you.

An Afternoon With The Ad Contrarian

I'm trying to think what will surprise people the most about Bob Hoffman. And I'd have to say it's how pleasant the man is.

Don't get me wrong. I assumed that he would be nicer than the ranting blogger he comes off as on "The Ad Contrarian." (Almost every blogger is nicer in person than you would think by their most scathing words.) But Bob was truly welcoming and was one of the most caring individuals I've ever met in the business. 

As soon as I arrived, he rushed out to see me. He invited me to his office with a smile and a handshake. He listened intently and shared enthusiastically. He was completely engaged. And when we moved to the restaurant next door for drinks, he footed the bill and made me feel completely at home.

And suddenly it hit me. After spending this time with him I understood that this demeanor he showed me was exactly why he blogged the way he did. He's not blowing off steam. He's not ranting for the sake of stirring up controversy. He does it because he cares. He cares a lot. He cares that this business is so volatile and doesn't need to be. He cares that clients don't appreciate agencies as partners anymore and treat them as vendors. He care about his people and aches about every layoff he's ever had to make. And he's tired of the same old cycle of agencies prostituting themselves to be the expert in every new tactical trend in order make the numbers, whether those trends make sense to the business or not.

We sat out on the patio at Houston's on the Embarcadero for about an hour and had a great talk about the state of the agency world. And in this time he shared with me both the struggles and highlights of his career. I got a glimpse of the accidental vision he had for an agency. And I saw that even after all this time he was a man willing to reinvent himself and his agency. 

I'm thinking this gushing of mine will embarrass him a bit. But he needs to hear it. And so do the rest of you. You may not agree with every one of his opinions on The Ad Contrarian blog. (Heck, his own agency isn't exactly comfortable with it.) But don't misinterpret his intentions. This man has a vision for creating focused partnerships with clients. And he's definitely someone more of us should get to know.

We Don't Call It TV Marketing

For the past couple weeks I've had a mantra: We don't call it TV marketing, so why do we call it social marketing?

Think about that for a second. TV is a media. Social is a media. In fact, unlike TV, we actually add media to the name for social media. So why, may I ask, do we treat social media as a tactical discipline?

With TV we don't limit ourselves to one set of tactics, after all. There are rules, certainly. Some things work better for some products, and some time slots work better for some executions. But essentially TV functions as a canvas upon which we paint our programs for branding, direct selling, product placement or press relations.

Now consider the gospel of social media. In this gospel, we have conversations and create engagement. We talk about it being hard to accurately measure effectiveness and we claim we shouldn't negate brand building as an objective. And most of all, we talking about it being a relational media, not a broadcast media. 

First let me say, all of the gospel is good. And God smiles on the socially savvy. But the facts don't hold up when it comes to looking at this approach as the one and only true faith.

A Problem of Scale
I can't emphasize enough that I agree in the principles of using conversation marketing as a relational medium. However problems arise in this model when it begins to scale.

What happens when you reach 20 million followers? Do we really expect a brand to have meaningful engagements with that many people? Even if we find key influencers and distribute the effort, we'll never cover that amount of folks. And as Valeria Maltoni pointed out on this week's episode of The BeanCast, problems occur when trying to keep up with even 200 followers.

At scale, there is no getting around the fact that the medium becomes a broadcast media for a brand. You can still listen and even engage in some dialogue, but for the majority of followers you are nothing more than a mouthpiece for the brand — a source of information and discounts.

And Let's Talk About Discounts
This brings up another issue with the social gospel. While it is good — nay, even desirable — to engage with followers, most people don't follow brands for a relationship. They follow the brand for discounts, deals and information.

Given that understanding, we begin to realize that it's not taboo to sell via social venues. It's just imperative to understand the level of the engagement and market appropriately.

For instance, if we understand that there is a difference between someone who "likes" a brand and someone who engages with a brand, then all we need do is message them appropriately. Likes are given brand messaging, while engagers are given offers. But to say that we can't pump an offer or two out is just silly. We just need to follow rules similar to direct mail in the end. We can blanket send the offer (which is stupid and annoying) or we can target specific channels with offers that make relevant sense (which is smart and effective).

What I am advocating here is not throwing out social media puritanism. What I am saying is that in advertising we rule media, we aren't ruled by media. And as such we need to get back to basics and stop muddying the discipline pool by saying we do social marketing. In marketing we do branding, direct selling/lead generation and public relations. I know it's semantics, but it's important to distinguish this in order to understand that we are able to paint all kinds of tactics on the canvas that social media provides.

And God smiled

Amen.

Branding Vs. Graphic Standards

How many times have you walked into a new marketing job or met with a new client and were handed the "binder" and told, "This is our brand manual. Learn it."

Fonts. Point sizes. Acceptable logo usages. PMS colors. Preferred phrasing. Taglines. This crap is not a brand. These are graphic and copy standards. They are a baseline for look. But they are not your brand.

A brand is a feeling. It's how your customer feels about you. And we're not talking about that Brand Hijack BS, because I think it's safe to say that it's been debunked. You still control the things that influence the way your customer feels. But in the end, your brand is the feeling a customer gets whenever they see your logo or interacts with a customer service representative or Likes you Facebook. And cultivating that feeling is the job of the marketer, not just making sure that the colors in the graphic standards manual are correct.

I think many of the problems with branding today stem back to this basic misunderstanding of the difference between brand and graphic standards. We get so caught up in establishing the yardstick and policing the standards, that we forget that branding is about emotions and heart. 

If you don't believe me, look at the Bank of America. They have done a stunningly brilliant job of establishing graphic standards and making sure that everything communicates the core message. Yet there is no heart. I still think of Bank of America as an uncaring behemoth with a maze of customer service issues. And when I look at Bank of America, I have conflicting emotions between their messaging and my memories of how they have treated me in the past. 

This is why I say over and over again here on the blog that a brand has to be a guiding objective of how we want customers to feel about us, and that objective needs to move beyond marketing to guide everything we do, say and make. Because if our brand isn't doing that, all we have is this year's binder with some color chips in it.