Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

How do you engage an audience that is barraged with marketing messages and are not interested in hearing about your brand?

The answer used to be disruptive experiences which often led to more annoying and shocking ads in more places (see above).

Thankfully marketers are moving away from disruption and toward adding value as the means to engage a potential customer. Now the question becomes:  What can you do to add value and how do you successfully integrate this with your brand or product?

One answer is to add elements of play to your marketing, or more appropriately, adding elements of marketing to a fun customer experience.

At a recent conference I attended I had the pleasure of hearing Ken Eklund speak on "The Seriousness of Play".  The talk underscored what I experience firsthand in playing games with my kids: play is a great enabler of creative thought, social interaction, memory and learning.  "Gaming is common ground, it allows marketers to engage with customers and change their relationship with them.  Think about the Olympics impact on foreign relations." says Mr. Eklund.

To give you a sense of what I am talking about below are a few examples of using games to engage an audience: 

Last week, Kevin Colleran, one of the first employees of Facebook and current Director of National Sales, stopped by Organic's NY office to answer a few questions. As we notice more and more companies jumping into the social media pool, we asked him to stop by to give a state of the union on Facebook.

Here are some highlights from our chat with Kevin about Facebook:

1. Brand pages...everyone from Starbucks to Obama have a page now. What's a little known fact about them?
Since they're free to setup, then companies sometimes build robust experiences - namely in the tabs. But, robust features don't outweigh quality content. At the end of the day, the vast majority of your fans do not continuously visit the fan page but will see the newly posted content in their News Feeds. And, with increased adoption of Become a Fan buttons, many never have to go to a brand page to express their affinity.

2. Over the past two years, Facebook has made significant changes to the user experience. What's been the result?
Many people visit Facebook every other day online. And with the mobile phone applications and mobile site, they're visiting in more places. You'd be surprised to know that 90% of the time people spend on Facebook is concentrated on the homepage newsfeed.

3. In terms of moderating conversation, what should we know?
First, know that all communications must occur in public. We don't allow brands to private message fans like individuals can private message each other. We block private messaging to avoid spamming. Second, by default, comments on the fan page Wall are turned on. So, when a brand posts something, then members have the right to comment. The only way for comments not to appear is if they're taken down by the page administrator(s). If you don't have a dedicated staff to monitor the page, then find a vendor that can auto-moderate by rejecting inappropriate comments and holding other comments until they've been manually approved. Expect these services to start at $2-3K monthly.

4. Should we remove pages created by people that bear the name and/or logo of our brand?
At first, it may seem that these user-generated pages are good - after all, who doesn't want users to generate positive content for your brand. But, things can go two ways. What if they start saying inappropriate things? What if they start misrepresenting themselves as employees? At the end of the day, these user-generated pages are liabilities. And as much as it may pain you to shut-down one of these pages, is the liability worth it?

We recommend brands migrate the fans of user-generated brand pages to the brand's official brand page. For current members of these pages, it's a seamless experience. How do you think Coca-Cola got to be the #2 brand on Facebook with over 3MM fans... it's mostly because they combined all the user-generated pages.

5. I'm noticing more and more brands integrating Facebook into advertising. For instance, T.G.I. Friday's is running television spots in which they've promised to give free hamburgers when their page reaches 500K fans. What are other ways to bring attention to your fan page?
Here's three things - ranging from free to paid. The cheapest way is to use a "Become a Fan" button on your homepage. If someone is already logged into Facebook, then clicking on the button adds them as a fan without having to leave your site. Second, you can put a link to your Facebook page in your communications - emails, newsletters, etc. Lastly, consider buying a roadblock on Facebook. We've noticed great success in growing the number of fans on pages with this type of media buy.

For more information about marketing in social media, contact socialmedia@organic.com. For examples of marketing on Facebook, visit http://www.facebook.com/marketing.

Kai Wright

image credit: romanlily

It's hard to be in the marketing biz without hearing about the power of bloggers -- particularly "mommy" bloggers. These are the parents -- usually fascinating people with large groups of friends -- who put thoughts on parenthood, baby products and the other cavalcade of topics that surround the first few years of having a kid.
 
Because of the monumental nature of parenthood, people are hungry for content, companionship and comraderie when it happens to them. And a friendly face in the form of a personal blog is an obvious oasis amid all the sales pitches, self-help books and professional cockamamy of those who want your dollars to help that kid grow.
 
To this end, us folks in the social media group have been chewing on what this means and where it's heading. We've gone to conferences, read numerous opinions and stories, and even helped formed strategies to influence the mommy bloggers for our clients.
 
More and more, you can see a line of discomfort for all parties developing along the issue of advertising. The concern for the mommy blogger is that a personal blog ceases to be personal when it's overly influenced by corporations or outside forces. And the popular ones are being constantly hit with pitches for event attendance, product samples and so on.

It's a huge debate around the Organic circle and it doesn't appear many CEOs are. Out of the 2009's Fortune-100, only 19 (gasp) have a personal Facebook page. But don't go shaking fingers just yet. What I found even more shocking was that only two had Twitter accounts -- one of which has ZERO tweets.[1] Wait. I'm not done. None had blogs.

Some of the Organic pool seemed to think that was okay. But the rest of us think they're missing a huge opportunity. The bigger question is, does your CEO need to be participating in social media? According to Organic's CFO and COO, Marita Scarfi, the answer is absolutely.

Her reasoning? "Being engaged with your customers allows you to produce better products/services which, in turn, leads to improved customer loyalty. Ultimately this helps increase sales and fosters stronger company financial performance (e.g. increased shareholder value)."

Customers usually know what they want today, yet they don't always know what they want in the future. This engagement can help companies lead the innovation and development of future products -- a critical part of the CEO's role. It's really not about the tool. It's about communication with your customers.

What Does This Have to Do with Facebook?
There's a rampage in the social media world driving companies to get on the next big social network. First it was MySpace. Then Facebook. Now Twitter. Sure, customers are there. But before you go pushing your unsocial-savy CEO to Tweet, ask him (or her) how he likes to talk to customers.

Part of the company's social media strategy should take into account the CEO's personality and what tool is best at helping them feel comfortable in their dialogue. They can start by simply talking to customers face-to-face, unstructured. Then maybe they try posting some short thoughts on Twitter (Marita's pick). If they like that, it's a good fit. If 140 characters just isn't enough to express themselves and they're finding it tough to inject their personality into anything coherent, they should try another means of conversing with their customer.

This is different than the brand presence. While the brand can sustain a Facebook page, it doesn't seem plausible that most CEOs can. It takes a lot of work to attract a following and keep them engaged. Work that a CEO just doesn't have time for.

Yeah, Like I Have Time To Be Updating My Facebook Status
Realistically, you can't expect a CEO to be logging on to Facebook a few times a day, or even every day, for that matter. They first have to figure out what to focus on. If you're interested in driving shareholder value, then you do that through knowing what your customers want or trying to predict what your customers want. That insight comes via dialogue.

Isn't That What I Have a Customer Service Department For?
This is different than traditional reactive customer service. It's more than answering questions or addressing complaints and feedback. Still your customer service department, or better yet, your social media specialist can help. Enlist them to help you listen. Then get someone to summarize the chatter, pull out the themes and put together a plan of action. That will tell you what your customers need to hear from you.

Only the CEO can communicate that transparency, because their job is to see the company holistically. Other positions are simply too specialized and focused. When it comes from the top dog, it's much more believable.

Help! I Have Writer's Block
If a CEO doesn't feel comfortable posting him- (or her)self, he might consider a ghostwriter (a la community manager) to do it for him. The point is that they should be responding to their community (read: customers and potential customers).

It's also important that they be authentic. Forget marketing-speak. Customers can get that from your ads. If you were having lunch with me, what would you say? Forget lawyers. Forget PR. I'll read right through that. Put yourself out there. I want to know what's really going on. Consumers these days want to be part of the process. Hence why when done correctly, crowd-sourcing projects are so successful (think Dell Idea Storm, My Starbucks Idea, etc.). 

Another reason this is important: according to the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer, faith in companies is at a 10-year low. And "The Most Respected Companies" in the Global Pulse 2009 Study from the Reputation Institute all have one thing in common. Brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Costco, Whirlpool, Google and FedEx are open and honest about what they're doing. That resonates more with customers, who tell their friends -- on- and off-line. You can't do that through advertising alone.

The study further reinforces the benefits of transparency:
"54 percent of consumers would give the most reputable U.S. companies the benefit of the doubt in a time of crisis and that perception of a company's ethical behavior and transparency in business dealings holds the most weight..."

The Institute goes on to recommend that by communicating to customers, companies "will create a connection with the U.S. consumers that with garner them resiliency and support in any situation."

A Few Are Doing it Well
• Marita likes how Costco's CEO Jim Sinegal gets out in the stores and talks to his employees and his customers. She believes you can do the same through social media.
• Fred Smith, FedEx Chairman, President and CEO, frequently contributes to the Company's "Citizenship Blog."
• Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com Tweets, blogs and interacts with employees face-to-face. His social media astuteness has become the company's mantra.
• Sun Microsystems' CEO Jonathan Schwartz writes a well-read blog for industry insiders. His open dialogue philosophy has become core to Dell's business strategy.
• Most of the CEOs on Twitter are from tech companies and the like. And while that appears a natural fit, I'd like to see more CEOs from the CPG industry -- the products I use (or could use) every day.


CEO's, the worst thing you can do is be silent. Consumers want information. If nobody is giving that to them, people will come to their own conclusions or write you off altogether.

Sarah Jo Sautter

1 Source: CEOs and Social Media from UberCEO

Barack Obama wasn't the only big winner of the past few months. Chicago-based Sol Sender--of the digital brand consultancy and design studio that bears his name--didn't do too badly either. In partnership with motion-design studio Mode, Sender and his firm developed what is now the most iconic political campaign symbol in American history: the Obama "O."

There probably isn't much that I can say about the O that hasn't already been said better by someone else, so I'll keep it brief. Instead I'll offer up a short, two-part video, featuring Sender himself. In the video he describes the process that led to O's creation, as well as its evolution as an agent of inclusiveness and symbol of transformation.

Part one above, part two below,

Daniel Turman

For those that are not familiar, Drop.io is a dead simple solution to the current issues surrounding privacy and sharing. It allows consumers to create their own private online spaces where they can share photos, videos, documents, and other types of media. For those that are not familiar with Chad Stoller, Chad is a friend of Organic and the former Executive Director of our Emerging Platforms group.

In July 2008, Drop.io added Chad Stoller to their management team as Vice President of Marketing. In that role, Stoller was put in charge of crafting Drop.io's central messaging and coordinating the company's community outreach and marketing efforts, both online and offline. Chad is a driving force of innovation, adding to whatever team that has the pleasure of working with him.

Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down with my old colleague and talk to him in depth about Drop.io and why what they are doing is something that we should all be paying close attention to.

1. What is the elevator pitch of Drop.io?

It's the easiest way to share files online.

No other service provides the number of inputs and outputs for your media. We have based our business on four distinct pillars: access, inputs, outputs and media views.

Access... we provide everywhere from the simplest to sophisticated for the most private. In fact, we are just getting started when it comes to access. We will be announcing some really interesting access and availability methods in the next four weeks.

Inputs... we asked, 'How do we make it absolutely easy for you to get into our system?' You can e-mail. You can leave a voicemail. You can fax documents. Everything gets converted into web format, Flash video, mp3, PDF. We provide all these way to get files into a drop.

Outputs... anytime a drop is updated, subscribers can get e-mail alerts, text messages, or RSS notification. We recently launched Twitter notifications. If I'm a journalist, I can be out, message a picture to a drop, and everyone who is subscribed on Twitter can see my new content.

We provide thousands of different solutions for thousands of people.

Alex Frankel, a business journalist and a keen observer of the hidden cultural norms that drive corporate America, has a new book out.  Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee chronicles his two years undercover as a barista at Starbucks, a UPS driver, and at the retail counters of Gap, Apple, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. It's a great premise.  Who doesn't want to get the insider perspective on some of the most admired consumer brands?  Alex focuses as much attention on how these companies recruit and train to enforce certain cultural values as he does to the experience of the job itself.  For advertisers who are looking to turn their customers into brand ambassadors, it's worth thinking about how these companies systematically go about turning hourly workers into successful messangers of the brand.

I met Alex during his stint as an Organic copywriter (future research?), and I had a chance to ask him some questions about the book.

Can you talk a little about the genesis of the project? And why a front-line worker and not, say, an entry-level employee?

When I was about 17 I met a guy who had worked as a UPS driver and he told me all about that job. He told me specifically about how much he had been analyzed and examined by some scientists sent from corporate headquarters: They had measured things like how long it took him to walk an average package to someone’s front door from his truck. The level to which they cared about such things intrigued me and from then on I knew I had to work for UPS some day, and to live the brand. My goal was to work entry-level jobs on the front-lines of customer service so I could stand in as the face of a given company.

For an ad agency like Organic, it seems like a fantasy to spend time with a brand the way you did - to really live and breathe it (although Agency.com was ridiculed precisely for this when they did their Subway pitch). How did being a front-line employee get you inside the brand?

When you are a front-line employee you represent a brand, a company, to the outside world. You are a channel through which a company can showcase what it stands for and represents. By working on the front-lines, as I did, I was able to bring in my understanding of branding and corporate culture and then see how companies trained me and indoctrinated me into their cultures; I could see how they were making me into one of them (or not).

What were some of the more intriguing differences between the consumer’s perceptions of the brand and what you actually encountered?

I went in with a feeling that all the frontline jobs I was applying to were jobs that essentially drew from the same talent pool, but I was completely wrong. Someone who elects to work at Starbucks is a very different person from someone who gets hired and stays on for ten years at UPS. There’s a self-selection process in play that I had not understood and that surprised me greatly. As a customer, by and large you don’t really know how a company uses its employees and what their true roles are. In each place I worked I found examples of this intriguing: Gap workers are given many incentives to sign up customers for GapCards; when Starbucks launches a new drink it tries to convince patrons to buy them; UPS drivers must work their way up from loading trucks to driving them.

The unprecedented hype and buzz surrounding the impending iPhone launch continues ... MSN is hosting a roundtable of authentic iPhone reviews from the following "anointed" journalists:

Newsweek's Steven Levy, the New York Times' David Pogue, Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today's Ed Baig.

Read their collective reviews here.

For a contrarian point-of-view, watch the Ries Report where Al Ries "proves" that the iPhone (a convergence technology) will ultimately fail - He compares the current hype for the iPhone to that of the Ford Edsel in the last century, a product that never lived up to the hype. His thesis is that successful products are divergent by nature (iPod, for example), not convergent. 

As a born contrarian, my head says Al Ries is correct. However, my heart WANTS an iPhone!

Thanks to Laura McGowan for the link.

David Feldt 

 

Want to know what the world will be like five short years from now?

New Yorker Magazine recently held their inaugural New Yorker Conference, “2012: Stories From the Near Future,” which took place last week.

Watch the views of luminaries like Malcolm Gladwell, Barry Diller, Arianna Huffington, Will Wright, and Craig Newmark.

Topics covered include:

• Genius
• Intellectual Property
• Power shifts in society (future of the organization)
• Morality
• Gaming
• Architecture
• Surrendipity
• Solutions
• Design
• Mobile Technology
• The Web

David Feldt