Charity begins online

With the holiday season comes the time of donating to charities. It's not surprising that we're starting to see this in different marketing guises. Two examples in the last week caught my eye. They're very different in many ways, but they both center on the idea of charity.

I received an email from Seth Godin's Triibe letting me know that Seth's had a new book out and that we had a chance to get the book three weeks ahead of the publication date. Now, I love getting (and reading) Seth Godin books. I have the milk carton from Purple Cow and the cereal box from Free Prize Inside on my shelf. My picture is one of the multitude on the inside cover of Triibes. So of course, I jumped all over this.

The catch was that I didn't have to pay for the book, per se. I had to donate $30 to the Acumen fund. Since it was a donation, I actually donated more. Seth's goal was to raise $100,000 for the fund, and get the book into the hands of his biggest fans.

Within two days, he had raised $108,000. And all of us get the book first. Win-Win.

Around the same time, Paypal, working with the great EVB, launched a site "Regift the Fruitcake." The fun idea is that no one wants to get the dreaded fruitcake for a gift. The upside is that instead of the fruitcake, you pick your favorite charity and get your friends to donate.  This all happens through social media, Facebook in particular.

Paypal provides the payment engine and gives away prizes each week. It looks like a great way to encourage people to donate to their favorite charities and to bring their friends and network along with them.

A week before Christmas, the Fruitcakes have collected close to $17,000. The biggest charity has raised a little over $2,000. There's probably a greater good will here, but it's not working as well as Seth's campaign. That might be for two reasons.

The first is that Seth targeted those of us who already were fans and had shone we'd plop down money for a book. But the fact that we get it first to review, instead of the journalists, was a free prize inside we couldn't resist.

With the Fruitcake, the person asking is a friend, not someone we look up to. And it's not clear what's in it for us, except that warm and fuzzy feeling.

Both are great ideas; don't get me wrong. But it's worth thinking about what makes great ideas work.

Facebook is Not a Strategy

I was reading SEO.com's post about the Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2009 the other day and they repeated something I see a lot of these days. They mixed up strategies and tactics. Number two on their list includes channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Having a Facebook page is not a strategy.

One challenge I find with clients interested in increasing their digital marketing, especially with social media, is that they, like SEO.com, equate a digital strategy with  having a Facebook page. The intent is good but the thought process needs help.

Are you looking to allow people a better way to connect with your brand? Would you like to get more first hand feedback? Do you want to find ways you can help people spread word of mouth for your brand? Would you like a fairly inexpensive way to reward your customers with coupons, specials, or deals?

If so, then Facebook might be a good idea for you.

Do you have very vocal anti-brand groups? Are you afraid of negative criticism or have no internal mechanism for dealing with it? Does your company not really have that much to share, except for sales promotions? Do you have a lengthy and complicated response procedure?

If so, then Facebook might not be a good idea for you.

All of the tactics listed in the MarketingVox article could work great, if they match up well with your brand's objectives and strategies. If they don't match up and you move ahead without putting at least a little thought into what you're doing, you may spend too much time putting out internal and external fires and not enough time building the right kind of relationships.

We all want action, now. Usually, and especially when you spend marketing dollars, it's worth creating a thoughtful strategy first.

Digital Leadership

On my trip to Boston this week I had the pleasure listening to an amazing group of digital pros talk about using labs and experimentation to change culture within an agency. The underlying message was that clients demanded digital expertise and solutions but that agencies still scrambled to show that they could deliver this. Traditional agencies, those weaned on the 30-second spot and the dynamic duo model of copywriter/art director, face the biggest challenge to change, as opposed to the pure digital players.

I also took the opportunity to talk briefly with Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer of Mullen. I've been following and interacting with Edward on Twitter and in the blogosphere, which is always fun. But in person is better. And I finally got to ask him the question I find most relevant:

"What did you do to shift the focus at Mullen from traditional to digital?" Now Mullen has always had a large interactive group but so do a lot of places. But if you compare what they're doing this year, and the attention they're receiving as a digital/social media agency, something's happening. And they're starting to leapfrog the other agency giants in Boston.

Edward's answer was consistent with other successful digital leaders. He discovered digital with a passion and became, at least mildly, obsessed with it. He thought it was a blast. It wasn't that he became the best technologist or the hottest coder. It was that as he dug in and played with it, it filled him with ideas and excitement and spoke to his creative muse.

That, in essence, is what every digital leader has to have. An excitement, if not passion, for the possibilities of technology. You can't fake that excitement. I don't think you can delegate that excitement. Many of today's leaders think hiring some one or some two will solve that problem, while the leaders sit back and see what happens. This can only work if the leader cedes much of his or her control to the new people. Which almost never happens.

If you look back over the past 10+ years, that's how agencies tried to manage the digital space. They started interactive groups, hired online specialists and then put their focus back on the traditional side. They were always surprised to find that their agencies weren't further ahead.

I had the pleasure of meeting Scott McCormick of VML several times. To me, Scott is great example of digital leadership. He took a medium sized, midwestern agency and helped turn them into one of the world's digital powerhouses. When I talked to Scott, his love of technology and gadgets always came out. He thought the digital space was so much fun that he surrounded himself with incredibly smart people who felt the same way. Scott always played down his own knowledge but it was clear to me that his passion drove the success of VML. The incredibly smart people around him aren't enough without that leadership.

Digital leadership, like any other leadership, doesn't flow from logic it flows from passion. The problem for many agency leaders is that they don't have that digital passion. But few are willing to leave or cede control so that their agencies can change.

If the traditional agency model dies, you can chalk it up to the lack of digital leadership.

Jumping into Social Media? Time to answer these 3 questions.

Every business and organization now feels the pressure to have a social media presence. If it's not someone in the marketing department (easy to ignore), it's a C-Type who's been to a conference or has read articles and has made this a "priority."

There are a lot of "We need help setting up our Facebook page" requests floating around. While I love the fact that more marketing departments want to engage in dialogue marketing, I find that many of them focus on the wrong question. They ask "How?" and "Where?"

What they need to ask is: Why? Who? What?

Why will participating in social media help your business? Are you simply looking to increase sales or to get a better idea of what people say about you?  Are you looking at social media as a way to build stronger connections with current customers or for finding new prospects? The answer to Why will help you build a strategy to guide everything you do. Or you may find that what you want to do doesn't make any sense on social media. You can avoid wasting precious time on something that will most likely not work.

Who do you want to connect with? Are they current customers or new ones? Are they teens or are they retired? Do they even use social media and how? Big questions, to be sure, but thankfully there are tools like those from Forrester's Groundswell. Their Social Technology Profile Tool helps you understand whether the people you want to connect with are those that simply like consuming content or actually enjoy creating it. Knowing this will help you hone in on the tactical directions and channels your social media needs to focus on.

What will you measure to define success? The bean counters are giving social media the hairy eyeball since their not convinced of ROI. You should choose KPIs instead (key performance indicators). You can choose a number of items to measure, everything from activity on your Facebook page, to Twitter ReTweets, to number of times mentioned on blogs, to visits or purchases on your Web site. It's important to choose something. There are lots of tools and services to help you monitor activity. For example, here's one interesting list of Twitter analytics tools you can use to measure activity.

If you can answer Why, Who and What, you can fill in those other important question like How, Where and When. You'll have a social media strategy you can explain to your team and your bosses. Hopefully, you'll have a roadmap for social media success.

Because without a good roadmap, you could be going in circles for a long, long time.

VT Brands Share Smart Social Media Practices

I had the pleasure of moderating a social media roundtable at the Vermont Technology Innovation Jam yesterday. My panel consisted of Steve Wright of Jay Peak, Sarah Byers of Leonardo's Pizza, and Rob Smart of Every Kitchen Table. Each of the panelists had very different situations but the commonalities and approaches of all of them were striking.

Jay Peak is what goes for a "big" company in Vermont. At least it has more complex marketing than other businesses and has a large local, regional and international reach. Leonardo's Pizza is a hyper-local business with two locations but a large "presence." Rob Smart has led a number of businesses and marketing departments in the state but he's recently gone out on his own building up his own personal brand from scratch in the sustainable food arena.

I liked how all three of them had a clear picture of whom they wanted to talk with. Leonardo's wanted a way to reach pizza hungry college kids, and local fans. Rob Smart wanted to engage some of the leading thinkers in the category. Jay Peak actually used social media to segment its audiences, from golf, to skiers to deal seekers. None of them spoke to "everyone." They each had an idea of WHO they wanted to build relationships with.

All of them bought into the concept of a generous social media strategy. They used the channels to "shine the light back on followers."  Leonardo's does this by publicizing content and feedback they get from its followers. Rob Smart does this by quoting and highlighting other bloggers on his blog. Jay Peak does this by promoting customer content created on Flickr and YouTube. They're each allowing customers to borrow some brand equity in order to increase it. Very sharp.

Most interestingly, big or small, each of them uses social media to make their product better. Leonardo's Pizza gets real time advice on new pizza creations they may not know much about, like Vegan pizza. Jay Peak uses social media to get brand advocate feedback on TV and print campaigns, letting crowdsourcing determine which creative they run. Rob Smart has used feedback from thought leaders and audience to help him stake out his own unique, and sometimes confrontational, position.

And Steve, Sarah and Rob have different ways of measuring their KPIs (Key performance indicators). Most importantly, in one way or another, they're actively measuring.

While these are smart successful people, the overall message to business people and marketers is this: If they can succeed, so can you. But like Steve, Sarah and Rob, you have to think about what you're doing, in order to get the most out of it.

What a fun afternoon that was.

Make Your Media Hybrid

I wrote a post earlier this year about how we (marketers) need to become hybrids. I've been thinking about hybrids a lot lately, and not only because I'm in the market for a Prius. I think it's time to declare Integrated Marketing dead. We're entering into the age of hybrid media. I'll have more on that later this week, but here's an example of what I'm talking about.

 This weekend I took my family out to a local, old-style family restaurant in Winooski. Right away, this card (leaning against the Parmesan cheese) grabbed my attention. At one point in my career, I would have loved to see this. The restaurant, Papa Frank's, has not only embraced online, it's using its table space to promote it. I like how this shows Papa Frank's thinking around building its database.

Only, it's not enough any more. The problem isn't the idea; the problem is that the card is not a hybrid. It's not interactive or actionable, except to ask someone for yet another piece of paper. At its most basic, Papa Frank's could've put the e-mail address right on the card. But in this day and age of smart phones and iPhones, they missed an opportunity to make this into a hybrid. Such as:

• Facebook - Rather than an entry ticket, Papa Frank's could've asked people to Fan it on Facebook, along with comments about their experiences. Its Facebook page would become, de facto, the rewards mechanism for its fans. Not only is that easy, but if they have a computer on the premise, they could make a big deal right in the restaurant. That would connect the experience to online back to the restaurant in real time.
• Yelp - Names are great. Online reviews are better. Papa Frank's might have made the entry a review on Yelp. The database would come from reviewers and they could reward people who wrote. More importantly, the call to action on the card not only helps the writer, it impacts the business through important word-of-mouth. Right now they have 9 reviews. They should shoot for 99 or 199. The contest becomes the action driven right from the table.
  
• Twitter - Again, an easy way to let people sign up is to allow them to follow Papa Frank's on Twitter. As an added hybridization, ask people to take a picture of themselves and their meal and post it as a Tweet for entry. Papa Frank's could make the photos into a Flickr gallery, which would increase search results.

Each of those ideas takes a broadcast media and connects it with a dialogue media. The bigger point is that the actions themselves go beyond signing up: they extend the campaign and, potentially, impact others.

It's not integrated; it's hybrid. Just like the gas engine powers the electric engine in the Prius, the hybrid marketing part power completely separate parts and makes them better. Integration depends on silos. Hybridization depends on breaking down the silos.

Hybrid marketing touches everything. More on that later. 

Social Media, like Rust, Never Sleeps. Neither should your brand.

I read a great post by Armando Alves last week about the rise of social zombies. He talked about the detritus of old microsites (they're like space debris, just waiting to smash something) and how he's seeing the same thing with social media initiatives. They probably look like some houseplants I used to have: good ideas at the time, but lacking the nurturing they deserved and ending up as withered vines in the garbage.

In one of his blog posts last week, Inaki Escudero captured a talk by R/GA's Bob Greenberg and Barry Wackman about the need to stop thinking about campaigns and to start thinking about platforms. They pointed specifically to agencies about the need for them to adapt and get rid of short-term thinking.

Both of these great blogs illustrate one of the key changes social media brings to the table: It never stops.

Campaigns have a beginning and an end. They're very much connected to sales initiatives inside of companies. Time to ramp up back to school or holiday, they say. We have a new product and we need to promote it. Agencies are only too happy to oblige. A new campaign usually means a lot of fresh money to create fresh ideas. That keeps everyone happy, from the bean counters to the rookie designers.

I recognize the ebbs and flows of the business seasons. What's changed, though, is a matter of control. Used to be that advertisers had control: they bought media to turn on the message and stopped it to turn it off. They can still do this, but the conversations and comments about the products and businesses don't stop once the radio spot is off the air. Brands and advertisers need to keep paying attention even though they might want to think instead about the next new, shiny campaign.

It's actually more challenging, and sometimes more rewarding to look at extending existing campaigns or platforms and allowing them to develop like true relationships. That's one of the big issues with social media and brands - you can't ignore someone and then expect them to come running back to you.

Look at a "campaign" that didn't quite stop: Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. Not only was this a well-integrated effort with a heavy Web focus at the time, but also Dove continued to evolve it. They realized that if they let this drop, people would see this as blatant falsehood and as an attempt at manipulation. If you visit the site today, you'll see a site focused on raising young girls self-esteem. It's now part of the Dove site itself. They now extend the site into a Facebook Fan page with 45,000 fans.

So here's today's challenge:
Take a campaign you're working on now, or one that just ended, and rather than pitch something entirely different, pitch extensions. Social media can help.

Teach Your Dumb Media to Speak

I had an interesting conversation yesterday that started about social media but turned into a discussion about two-way communication. Right now, there's so much buzz about social media and things like Twitter's billion dollar valuation that we might be missing the whole point of what's going on.

The business of Twitter isn't that important. The functionality Twitter introduced is. That's why companies like Facebook are trying to duplicate it.

Twitter and social media created a giant leap forward in dialogue branding. They provided ways we could have two-way connections in real time with people and brands all over the world. The connections are immediate and public. That combination is unique and is changing the way brands communicate.

What's lacking right now is the way companies connect its overall marketing to its social media presence. That's why everyone talks so much about Starbucks, Dell or HBO when they actually do something like this.

Since you can access social media from any connected device, like laptops or cell phones, it's surprising that we don't see more marketing that connects fixed and dumb media (think billboards, taxi tops, truck siding, or products like cups, hats or food wrappers) to social media.

Think of all the McDonalds paper wrappers people open up to eat their burgers. For most people its garbage. How many of those do they produce each year? Imagine if there were something fun you could actually do with those, connecting to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare?

How about if billboards and truck siding encouraged you to do something on social media and you received rewards for acting? In that way, social media could make ignorable media worth participating in.

Now I know that some of these do have response mechanisms. But they broadcast: "Everybody look at this and call this number of visit this Web site." It's not immediate, and it's not public. That's where the fun of social media comes in and that's where the difference is. McDonalds burger wrappers might be a stupid idea, except when you can see that other people in the restaurant participate at the same time you do. Then you've built some unexpected and sometimes odd connections. But they're usually pretty fun and memorable.

Every company has a ton of fixed and dumb (that is, it can't speak) media. It's time to teach your dumb beasts to speak and create dialogue with your audience.

Digital Lacks a Storytelling Paradigm

We all hear the stories about the upcoming downfall of traditional media: Newspapers going under by 2042, Hollywood and TV soon to follow the troubles of the music industry, Books - all electronic, and Radio, well, what's that? While I'm not discounting the troubles the industries, or rather the economics of the industries, face, I think it's one thing to say they're in trouble, another to discount them entirely.

Despite the shift in media attention, the digital space still hasn't found its paradigm in how it tells stories. Personally, I can't compare anything I see online to the pleasure in watching a well-crafted movie or TV show. That story format moves me in ways online hasn't approached.  In fact, the promise of digital (non-linear and interactive) seems to reach its pinnacle from a storytelling perspective in, of all places, video games.

Obviously digital is great at the non-linear, the immediate and at the two-way interactivity (although we still have a ways to go on that). Right now it seems to thrive on information retrieval and transactions, two important items for any business or individual. Maybe that's enough. But it seems that if this medium is truly revolutionary then it should start developing its story telling paradigm.

When you bring this to the marketing space, it's absolutely critical. Paid search works because it's informational, transactional and intent driven. Brand advertising, on the other hand flounders online because there are few good digital storytellers there, and even fewer who are willing to push the limits, unfortunately.

One of the most interesting examples, lately, is the Pringles banner ad. Whether or not you like the content, that banner was one of the few places where people had to see how the banner ended. And that's a great definition of a good story: you have to stay around to see the end.

That's what video games do. Now I played way more video games before I had kids.  There are a lot of reasons they're so addictive: I'm in control, everything I do causes the game to do something (interactivity), I get rewards or penalties for my actions, I discover things and I play in a story continuum. Now, I can even play with people all over the world. The goal is to get to the end, to see how the story concludes. Great games try to keep adding on endings so you won't stop. This is great digital storytelling.

I may choose to go online instead of watching TV or a movie. But I'm not swapping consuming one story for another. I go online to snack information, I watch movies to enjoy a story. When we go online to enjoy stories, that's how we'll know digital has arrived.

The question is whether that story will be passive like TV or active like gaming. Right now I think the industry could use more gaming stories to promote brands and products. I'm still surprised to see the Orbitz banner games still around; I used to have colleagues who'd play on those all day. When was the last time you could say that about an ad?

Brands will need help taking story-telling risks like this. But social media will help, because it will help extend the stories to those who haven't seen them yet. Good stories cause people to talk about them. We need to start pushing the limits of how we currently use this medium to tell those stories.

Listening Means More Than Social Media

Social media puts a lot of emphasis on listening. The first advice for those jumping into social media is to listen to what customers say about your company. It's funny, but companies listen all the time, whether they know it or not. Or rather, they hear, but they don't listen. While listening in social media is a good thing, companies need to get better to its customers and prospects as part of its regular business as well.

I was struck by how Alice.com allowed you to list how long a product lasts in your household. Their idea is to offer service or reminders when they see that it's time for you to reorder something. Collecting this data isn't new; using it is. Alice.com listens to what its customers do.

It reminded me of the time I was pitching a major grocery chain in the northeast many years ago. My idea was similar to what Alice.com does now. Since the chain used customer cards, they had a rich, thorough picture of everyone's shopping habits. How about using that to make life easier for your customers? I suggested. No way, they said, we wouldn't dare use that information. Crazy as it sounds they heard what customers did, and perhaps they used it to manage the stock in its stores. But they refused to use it to personalize the experience.

Smaller companies do this too. They know who its customers are and who its prospects are. When it comes time to market, these companies usually create one campaign - one size fits all. But customers don't want companies to treat them the same. How about adjusting your campaigns to segment each group? With email and online advertising, creating segmented creative is easy (although you still have to think of different sets of content). How about creating different offers for heavy buyers and light buyers? Or separate connections for happy customers and less happy customers? Or offers to people who've inquired but never bought?

The reality is that most business these days collect lots of information about its customers but most rarely use the data for any type of individualized marketing. It's too bad; we like it when you pay attention to us.

Listening involves not only hearing what customers say, but also acting on what you hear in some way. Listening is interactive since it involves two moving parts. Hearing is passive; you can take in lots of information, but it never moves past your eardrums.

Companies hear a lot, every day. It's time they use listening skills inside the existing business. Companies don't need new social media programs or Facebook profiles to make this happen. They just need to pay attention.

If the data feels overwhelming, start small. I'm sure you'll be surprised at what happens.