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Stories from Big Brand-Builders in Brazil

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

I’m just getting back from one of the most whirlwind trips of my life last week, as I presented our Marketing with Meaning manifesto on two continents. I started the week in Sao Paulo, Brazil, speaking with a few hundred members of the Association of Brazilian Advertisers (ABA), and finished the week in Ghent in front of about 1,000 people at the annual Belgian Marketing Federation event. Both were great opportunities to bring our message to a diverse, global audience of people united in their desire for a new marketing model. Plus, I got to be an audience member for others’ great presentations, and get to share what I learned with you here. First up, Brazil…

Sao Paulo Impressions

Let me begin by saying that I was incredibly impressed by the country of Brazil and the people who I had a chance to meet. It was my first time in this fast-growing country, and I believe we will be talking a lot more about Brazil in the years ahead. Brazil has a large, youthful population, huge resources, and a government that seems to be balancing democratic freedom and guided development. In comparing Brazil to fellow growth engines China and India, I would say that Brazil has the freedom and cultural vibrancy of India, and the tighter, organized infrastructure of China. It didn’t even sneeze when the rest of the world suffered the recent economic sickness, and it seems like every entrepreneur is building profitable businesses there. Buy and hold Brazil, folks.

Pekka Rantala, Global Marketing SVP, Nokia

We started off the event with a speech from Pekka Rantala, who came all the way from Finland to share his thoughts on the future of marketing and how Nokia is evolving.

  • “Technology is back in the hands of the people.” Pekka talked about how the mobile device is used to fall in love or create a flash mob pillow fight—use scenarios that the company would never have imagined. He said that Nokia “is in the business of connecting people… and making technology as human as possible.” Nokia “wants to be in the business of connecting people to what matters most, wherever you are.” One thought I had is that Nokia should be measuring its success by whether people are connecting more and are happier once they have purchased Nokia devices.
  • “Brand Strength = Number of Users x Net Promoters.” This is a new success measure that Nokia is tracking, and a new way of building brands—with word of mouth at the forefront. It follows from Pekka’s belief that “conversation is the new conversion” and a brilliant way of adapting measures to the new rules of marketing. Nokia is spending less time and money on the old purchase funnel, which is too biased toward TV.
  • Interesting data from consumer usage. By owning the connection device, Nokia is at the forefront of understanding how consumers around the world are shifting their mobile habits. More than 1.3 billion people around the world use a Nokia device. They see that in terms of daily time allocation with these devices, only 12% is devoted to voice communication, and 37% to instant messaging.
  • Nokia is shifting its organization to be more digital. The company is spending more on digital than TV already—not because Pekka ordered it, but because of smart decision-making by local managers around the world. This has been driven by an organization project aimed at creating training, rotating experts, sharing best practices, encouraging networking, and getting senior leaders to personally engage.

Steve Rappaport, Director of Knowledge Solutions, Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)

I had a fellow U.S.-based speaker in Steve Rappaport, who came to speak about the power of listening to make great marketing. Steve has written a few books on advertising research and has a new one coming out in the spring titled Listen First! You can check out Steve’s recap of his speech here, but I wanted to share some of my notes:

  • First, it’s worth noting that the ARF has a brand purpose: “Advocate for quality research that improves decision-making in marketing.” The organization has been doing its good work for 75 years.
  • “Listening is the study of naturally occurring signals.” These are conversations, behaviors, and biometrics (i.e., how people feel). The idea is to listen so that you can bring the voice of people’s lives into the brand.
  • “There are 4.5 billion brand-related conversations per day in the U.S. alone.”
  • “Competitive advantage results from getting the right information, the right interpretation, then acting on it in marketing.”
  • “Constant adaptation is the new key to marketing; and listening is the key to adapting.”
  • Hennessy discovered an opportunity with African-Americans after seeing inbound URL links from a website called Black Planet five years ago. Marketing to this community grew sales with the niche, but also grew relevance and sales among its wider target.
  • The Gillette Fusion team listened to lapsed users and found that they said it “shaves a little better, but the price is too high for the slightly better shave.” As a result, the brand took the refill cartridge price down and also toned down the promises in its advertising.
  • MINI came up with some of its best marketing because of a need to maintain sales momentum after launch, despite no new product launches. It discovered that “owners treat their cars as pets” and it decided to drive engagement among current owners. A large increase in their word of mouth from these efforts continued the sales surge.

Fernando Vila, CEO, Havas Group

I don’t normally like to take the time to rave about my competitors, but I have to give some credit to Havas CEO Fernando Vila for flying in from France to share a compelling perspective on marketing today and tomorrow. He captured the state of our industry exceedingly well:

  • “Marketing is a dangerous industry.” Vila pointed out that the average CMO tenure is only 26 months, and that marketers are facing the biggest crisis in mass consumption in the Western world since World War II. He talked about how the crisis lies in the fact that “consumption” is no longer celebrated and no longer a major yardstick of personal progress. Once it was “news” in the neighborhood when someone on the block got a new car or new washing machine. Back then, advertisers talked at consumers like they were babies. Today, technology is putting consumers in the driver’s seat. We are moving from a tyranny of advertisers to a consumer democracy… and it’s easier to govern a tyranny than a democracy (see China vs. India, but I digress…).
  • “Total media consumption time is about the same, but media interaction time is much higher and growing exponentially.” I think this is an under-reported story of media today, and one that should give marketers pause.
  • “Agencies are not capturing value; they are surviving.” This comment was pretty impressive coming from someone who runs agencies for a living, but it is absolutely true. Vila compared our industry to others that are turning into commodities. We are consolidating rather than growing—only five out of the 13 communications holding companies that existed in 1995 are around today, and clients are investing less and less in advertising expenses. Meanwhile, new players such as Google, Facebook, IBM, and Omniture are the ones growing and adding value to marketing today.
  • “Agencies have three assets that they can still use to win in the marketplace, but they won’t last forever.” (1) Goodwill: We still have “some” respect for our clients and they still call an agency when launching a new product; (2) Creativity: These skills are still a key element of building brands and the new players are largely lacking it; and (3) Expertise: the ability to understand and connect both brands and consumers.
  • “The new brand-building process is all about getting social capital.” We must get consumers to talk, think, and trust. The role of agencies is to “help brands restore trust through meaningful communications strategies.”

I enjoyed the chance to take my message to Sao Paulo along with these amazing thinkers and leaders and I can’t wait to return.

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Cannes Takeaways Day 2 #canneslions

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Is it digital? Traditional? Or are we way past the point of the online versus offline debate? That’s the question that was resonating in my head and among colleagues on Tuesday, Day 2 of the Cannes Advertising Festival.

Unfortunately most of the seminars I attended left me with little to write about. They seemed to cover the same material or be a bit too direct of a sales pitch than what should happen at Cannes. So I spent a good chunk of time walking the floor of work in the Outdoor and Direct category. And I came back with the following observations.

Outdoor has no scale—but no one doubts it.

The outdoor work that made the short list and won Lions was outstanding. It was entertaining, linked to brand benefits, and smart. Although I have debated in the past in this space whether outdoor ads are meaningful, the work here demonstrates that even a traditionally interruptive medium can add value to people’s lives when it makes them laugh, cry, or think. It reminded me that any medium can be meaningful.

But one of the things that hit me was that these award-winning outdoor ads are often one-off executions that might appear in a single city for a limited time. Because they are innovative and often surprise people with a laugh, there’s little use in keeping it up once everyone has gotten the joke. Several of the executions were also expensive and difficult to place. You simply cannot expose them to enough eyeballs to generate “scale” like a print ad or TV commercial. Take this terrific example from Hot Wheels, below:

Another favorite of mine was this campaign for James Ready beer. It offered billboard/photo coupons for local stores so that you could save money in other ways and put the savings toward beer.

Clients are looking for scale, so why would they sign off on this kind of one-off work? It’s a challenge we hear all of the time in digital, but I’ve not heard it applied to outdoor before. Perhaps this comes from the agency test/award budget, or maybe, just maybe, clients are starting to buy into great ideas that make a big impact with a smaller audience. It’s a question I’d like to explore further and would love your comments here.

Direct is digital.

In looking at the range of Direct nominees and winners I was amazed by the amount of work that I would call digital. “Direct” has traditionally meant something that went in the mailbox—but if Cannes is the standard, that definition is done. My friend David Sable at Wunderman has said for years that “direct is digital” and he just might be right.

Take the example above for Nokia’s navigation tool: The World’s Largest Sign. Here, people could search for directions online in London and the sign would rotate in real-life to point to whatever you searched for. To me, this is a digital idea that just happens to connect to the real world. But it was offered in the Direct category.

Another example is this direct/outdoor piece for The Economist in India that asked people to text for clues to decipher the political debate behind the ad.

Where are the digital agencies?

This merger of Direct/Digital brings me to my final takeaway of the day. This morning I opened the daily Cannes Lions magazine to look for the short-listed work in the Cyber (digital) category. It’s the category we won a Gold for last year for our Pringles banner. I was blown away to see that of the 150 or so short-listed entries, only about 6 or 7 of them were created by digital agencies from the Advertising Age list. Very big names such as Razorfish and Digitas were missing in action. This could be the big news of Day 3 when the final Cyber winners are handed out.

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but there are a few hypotheses. Maybe digital agencies don’t know how to do the kind of work that wins Cannes awards—or they don’t know how to “campaign” to get their work into the winner’s circle (a little-known secret to winning sometimes). Another possibility is that a lot of the work digital agencies do—such as e-commerce sites, mobile apps, search optimization, and social media relationship marketing programs—simply don’t fit into a creative awards competition. What tends to win here are one-off “ideas” in the form of smart, funny, interesting engagements.

Or, maybe traditional agencies are now very close to mastering digital agencies’ space. After years of wondering and waiting, maybe they finally now get it. If so, and if Cannes is the place this is judged, it’s not great news for digital agencies like mine. But this also might be a wake-up call for those of us on the digital-agency side to take our game up a notch or two.

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Takeaways from Sustainable Brands Conf #SB10

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

It’s officially conference season for marketers around the world and I’ve been doing my share to spread the good word of Marketing with Meaning on this variation of the campaign trail. Two weeks ago I got a chance to speak at the Cause Marketing Forum in Chicago, next week is our huge seminar at the Cannes Lions Ad Fest (where I’ll be blogging and tweeting all week), and last week I got a chance to take the stage at the Sustainable Brands event in Monterey, California.

Sustainable Brands is one of the largest and longest-running events dedicated to the topics of sustainability and corporate responsibility, and how they come to life in marketing for some of the biggest brands in the world. I had the chance to meet executives from companies such as Microsoft, Unilever, and Walmart. Some of the delegates hold specialized roles in their companies, while others were traditional brand marketers at companies that have mainlined sustainable business and marketing practices. I felt a little like the wild card participant at the event. I didn’t share a case study on sustainability or have an agency devoted to this surging specialty practice. Instead I got to come in and share how the interruptive model of marketing is no longer sustainable, but that Marketing with Meaning offers a new path—a path in which brands can reach incredible results both in building the business and improving the world. You can see the slides from my brief presentation below…

Interestingly, I got one piece of negative feedback from an audience member in a roundabout way that I would rather not describe here. Someone in the audience from a different advertising agency complained through certain channels that I was far too strong in my comparison of interruptive advertising to pollution, and that I might have embarrassed this person’s clients. This was a new first for me, as I’ve been tougher on our profession before (I always say “our” or “we” because I live in this industry, too) with many more advertising folks in the room, and never gotten this response. Sadly, I offered to discuss this concern directly with the person but I’ve yet to hear a response. What do you think? Was I too tough?

Moving on, I only got to attend one of the four days that the conference ran last week, but I did manage to capture some killer content for you, dear readers. There were three terrific presentations from marketers that had me giving my new TweetDeck iPad app a rigorous workout:

Timberland

Mike Harrison, Chief Brand Officer for Timberland, took the stage to share the story of the company’s resurgence behind its new Earthkeepers boots. A fellow Procter & Gamble alum, Harrison kicked off his presentation by saying that his years in traditional marketing at P&G did not prepare him for this new world of developing and marketing sustainable products. He went on to admit that the company is still figuring out the right path in this new space; but after listening to Mike on stage and in a Q&A session later in the day I believe Timberland just might be writing the missing manual for success.

Timberland itself is a company that is focused on delivering “commerce and justice” in everything it does; its positioning is “the authentic, sustainable outdoor brand,” and as a brand that is about enjoying and exploring the outdoors it has a built-in link to environmental sustainability. Last year the brand created a Facebook application that led the company to plant more than 1 million trees. The company has created a kind of “nutritional label” for its shoe boxes that shows what goes into them, and it has pledged to improve the sustainable sourcing of its products every year. And this also follows through the company’s organizational culture: For years, employees are encouraged to take a week of additional paid time away from the office to volunteer on causes they value.

This starting point helped the brand recognize the opportunity to create an Earthkeepers boot that uses recyclable materials and works with suppliers to minimize the environmental impact of activities such as leather tanning. The end product is something that looks good or better than other boots. (Well-used, recycled leather always looks better.) And the company is working on an Earthkeepers Boot 2.0 that can actually be sent back to the company for repair and recycling.

The idea works strategically because it is helping the company differentiate in a very crowded marketplace. As Harrison said, “Anyone with a fax machine and a friend in China can make a boot.” Results have been very strong so far: It should soon be a $400 million line and is helping the brand improve on key equity measures. Harrison showed how the stock price is up 50% since the company repositioned itself away from hip-hop and back toward the environment. Interestingly, a vast majority of sales of the boot are from outside the U.S., so this growth should only continue as the brand prepares to expand the line and its marketing budget. Expect more big things from this brand in the year ahead!

IBM

I was excited to see Lee Green from IBM at the conference because we will have his colleague, John Kennedy, join us at Cannes next week. Green is Vice President of Corporate Marketing at IBM, and he shared the story of the company’s move to make “A Smarter Planet.” Like Timberland and many of the best case studies, IBM’s new path came from years of slowing sales and growing competitive pressure. The company needed to be about something more than hardware or consulting services; it desperately needed a new focus and positioning on something higher-level.

IBM went to its roots and rediscovered its history of creating products that drive progress. It realized, however, that “progress” is not about the technology itself, but rather about how technology can be used to improve the world. IBM realized that “the planet is getting flatter… and smarter”—and it had an opportunity to make a Smarter Planet. This new direction is leading the company into some pretty interesting new businesses. For example, it is helping companies re-fit aging buildings to meet the latest green guidelines. It is working on a tool to allow people to see the energy they are using, which results in 15% less usage and a 10% cost savings.

Smarter Planet is more than a new ad campaign; this is really an entirely new positioning for the company—and it is delivering on the concept of Smarter Planet by doing more than running TV commercials. For example, it hosted an Eco-efficiency Jam earlier this year that brought together 1,600 business, government, and NGO leaders from more than 140 countries to work on some of these key problems together.

The results of this redirection are very preliminary but seem to be having an impact. IBM is growing again, and it was named as the second most valuable brand in the world in Interbrand’s annual survey, with a valuation of $60 billion.

Jack Daniels

We’ve recently begun doing some work the Brown-Forman, the parent company of Jack Daniels, so I was excited to meet and hear from Rob Kaplan, who leads Corporate Responsibility for the company. He shared the story of how Jack Daniels, arguably the number-one spirit brand in the world, is discovering the power of including sustainability in its marketing strategy. Like the two examples above, Jack Daniels did not have to invent or add a meaningful message—rather, it went back to its roots and what it has continued doing today. At its small distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, 99% of waste is reused. Used barrels are sold to others who reuse them, grain by-products are sold to local farmers who feed them to their animals, and the nearby streams are kept perfectly clean because it is this limestone-filtered water that gives Jack Daniels its smooth taste.

Kaplan spoke about how the company spoke with Sam’s Club, which was looking to feature brands that have true sustainability credentials. After hearing the story of the Jack Daniels recycling and reuse program, they asked for a very large order to feature on special nationwide. Now, those of you from the CPG world know that getting new distribution, on feature, at a chain such as Sam’s Club can basically make your number for the year. But instead of just putting some regular Jack bottles on a pallet and shipping them out, the brand took the opportunity to create a special SKU. This new, limited-edition bottle not only gave brand fans something unique, but Jack Daniels partnered with a nonprofit organization to plant 100,000 trees with proceeds from the sale of these special bottles.

Not only did this initiative help secure incremental sales at Sam’s Club, but it earned positive word of mouth from sustainable product fans. For example, this Sierra Club blog post glowingly wrote of the promotion.

Overall I came away from this conference convinced that “sustainability” is no longer just some kind of siloed corporate department or annual report box to check off. It is something that consumers are demanding of the products and services they buy every day, and it offers a strategic focus for brand marketing with meaning.

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Gives and Takes from #AdtechSF

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Yesterday I returned from the first Ad:Tech event of the year in San Francisco. As usual, it was a great opportunity to reconnect with friends in the industry and pick up a few new nuggets of what’s new in digital marketing. I also had the chance to give back some knowledge to the event participants during a session that I joined Tuesday afternoon. Here in this post I will share what I shared, as well as some of the highlights from the Tuesday sessions.

A New World of Word of Mouth: Using Influence to Re-invent the Impression

This was the session that I had a chance to present in, along with three other brilliant digital marketers: Tim Schigel, CEO of ShareThis, Jim Price, President of Empower MediaMarketing, and Joel Lunenfeld, CEO of Moxie Interactive.

I moderated the session and kicked things off with a marketer’s perspective on what’s new in digital marketing—and I promptly shocked (shocked!) the crowd by declaring that marketers have lost their perspective on what makes digital marketing great. I launched into the slides above, in which I attempted to make the point that if we dumb down digital marketing to being measured by the same, basic “impression” that traditional media has used forever we will kill the innovation that makes new media great. I love starting with a provocative note and I think the audience reacted very well according to the smiles, nods, and Twitter feedback I saw during my short segment.

Following me, Tim shared some excellent research on how people share content, and why we need to remember the right “word” in word of mouth. Jim shared a case study on how his firm used a killer new media model developed by ShareThis in which the Mederma scar creme was able to target advertisements to people who had shared relevant content with others. And Joel wrapped things up with a story about how marketers need to move toward looking at creating digital content that mirrors the video game industry—starting with the joystick that is the mobile phone. I will share their decks here when they are available.

Jamie Cohen Szulc—CMO of the Levi’s Brand

Jamie kicked off the Tuesday session with a keynote speech about how his brand has hit the recent button in recent months to become more meaningful to consumers’ lives. While only six months into his job, Jamie is pushing a revolution through this legendary brand that has fallen off the tracks in recent years. I could barely keep up with the gems that rolled off his tongue, but some of the quotes and insights he shared included:

  • “Marketers want more, global control at a time when the market is fragmenting more than ever.”
  • “The Internet taps into core human values.”
  • Levi’s has to become “original, real, and relevant to ME.”
  • The brief for the new campaign was simple: “Make people fall in love with Levi’s again.”
  • Although the new marketing work started with a TV commercial “to signify a new approach,” the brand is taking it to much more digital and meaningful work from here on out.
  • “We must move from Marketing ROI to creating Business Models.”
  • “Change must start from within—you’ve got to change the organizational culture first.”
  • Change is great and needed, but “you can’t disrupt a market in a day… it’s a long-term investment.”
But the highlight of his talk was a case study of how Levi’s created a T-shirt brand from scratch in South Africa. I can’t summarize it any better than the video below:

Overall, it was great to see a big brand CMO take the stage and talk openly and honestly about a meaningful marketing transformation in progress.

Chris Anderson Talks About the iPad

This was another treat—to see the Wired magazine leader and author of books such as The Long Tail and FREE give us his take on Apple’s latest game changer. While I think I would pay to see Chris talk about anything, it was particularly interesting to hear him share his thoughts on how he looks at the iPad from a magazine’s perspective.

Carrying a silver iPad onto the stage (I kept worrying that he would drop it), Chris started off by claiming, yes, this is the next big computing platform after the PC and mobile phone. He claimed that despite misses on tablet computing in the past, the time was ripe today because of three things:

  • The success of the iPhone showed the power of a rich media application platform.
  • The success of the Kindle showed how a flexible, convenient media and distribution channel brings a better experience.
  • The rise of cloud computing means tablets need a less powerful chip, less bloatware, and less hard drive space—which frees up companies such as Apple to build a lovely device.

Chris tied together magazine insider insights with topics that he explored in his books. His main point was that he was excited that the iPad will offer a much better experience for Wired readers. He and his team have been working on the platform for a while already, and they promise to launch a magazine that will combine the best of print and digital. Chris talked about how the killer platform of the iPad might allow for scarcity again, and create a better business model. His point is that “scarcity power” for print magazines was based on the cost-of-entry barriers of printing and distributing physical magazines. But the free information of the Internet is destroying these entry barriers, making scarcity a thing of the past, and killing the magazines’ business model.

He thinks that it will take high-end designers to make the most of the iPad’s platform—meaning that Joe Blogger won’t be able to offer a free experience that matches what Wired is working on. So quality of the experience could be a barrier to entry and driver of scarcity that leads to new profits. While I’m doubtful that this will happen, it would be a “good” kind of scarcity that is based on reader enjoyment rather than means of production.

Chris lost me completely, however, when he delved into the case for how advertising could be revolutionized on the iPad. He talked about how it could allow for engagement, move beyond measuring CPM, and be more creative. But everything he said is already possible today with Web-based marketing. A relative handful of people using iPads will not cause a revolution. Rather, organizations have to take the first step to embrace these features and possibilities that already exist on the Web. He also was in awe that people would now have to page through full-page ads again with the new iPad magazine experience. This, to me, is a step backward in the consumer experience. It just seemed like a lot of wishful thinking for a business that just cannot survive without the mass marketing model.

So thanks to my friends at Ad:Tech (especially Brad Berens) for inviting me to speak at and learn from this great conference once again. I hope to see you in the next events in Chicago or New York!

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Sharing Social Insights from #SXSW

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

sharing kids

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how our society is becoming more “social” thanks to digital tools that are bringing us closer together. Blogs, online communities, Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare are helping people help each other more than ever since we broke out of small clans thousands of years ago. For a while I have believed that these social-media tools are taking off because they match the way the human race has evolved to survive and advance by sharing. At the SXSW Interactive conference, I had the chance to see professor and author Clay Shirky connect more dots for me in his talk, titled “Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data.”

Shirky retold several stories from his excellent book, Here Comes Everybody, but focused on describing some fundamental insights around what and why people share. His first point was that people are programmed to share based on millions of years of evolution in which we lived in small groups and traded favors and resources to survive. Remembering favors and managing personal relationships takes up a large part of our advanced brains, and studies show that there is even a limit to how many relationships our powerful processors can manage at one time (Dunbar’s number, which is said to be 150 for humans). The act of sharing releases a pleasant-feeling dopamine reward and positive memories that last for some time.

But all sharing is not created equal. While all forms of sharing can bring positive feelings, different types come at different costs. Shirky painted the picture of an old woman walking toward you on the sidewalk. She is trying to get your attention and can ask for one of three kinds of favors:

  • Goods: She might ask for money. This causes us to tense up and feel most negative, because sharing a “good” like this comes at a one-for-one cost. If you give her your money, then you cannot benefit from it any more.
  • Services: She might ask you to help her cross the street. This comes at some cost, as you must stop what you are doing and spend your time backtracking with her. But this favor does not take much from you.
  • Information: She might ask for directions to a nearby store. This favor is essentially free because it takes very little time and nothing is lost. Interestingly, because information is given at no cost, our society generally looks down on people who fail to share this. We have evolved to punish people who fail to share alike.

Shirky used this model to describe how online music swapping arose so quickly with Napster despite claims that it was socially unacceptable—like stealing. In the days of records, people did not share music very often because you would literally have to give up your record album to a friend. It was a good people did not want to part with. With the rise of cassettes and CDs, people shared more often by making a mix tape or burning a copy. This was a service that took some time to do for each person, so it was still fairly difficult. But the ability to rip and share music online turned music into information that people easily shared among friends. In fact, we became compelled to share this information at risk of being perceived as a hoarder.

Technology that allows for greater sharing, say turning goods into information, or making information much easier to share broadly, has led to some of the largest societal changes in history. The adoption of the printing press in medieval Europe brought religion to the masses and sparked revolutions in faith and science. According to Shirky, “abundance brings more change than scarcity.” He described how already digital sharing is “turning small, private, expensive good acts into big, public, cheap ones.”

I believe marketing is one of those models that will change dramatically because of the power of sharing. Today, digital tools have turned us all into consummate sharers. With five seconds on Facebook or TripAdvisor, we can benefit from the positive feelings of sharing tips and reviews with friends and strangers. Such information is more trusted and useful than anything advertisers can say, and Google places much heavier weight on what society says when individuals search for answers online. Advertisers, grocery stores, maitre d’s, and travel and real estate agents no longer have the power of information scarcity in a society in which people are rewarded, encouraged, and compelled to share with each other.

In a presentation after Shirky’s, renowned speaker Tim Sanders shared his experiences and secrets on how to make a living from the speaking circuit as he does. That’s right, Sanders gave away extremely rare and powerful information to people who might end up competing against him for speaker fees in the future. But Sanders enjoys helping others, and he believes that he is better off sharing with others who will drive the personal connections and positive word of mouth that will him get more, higher-paying speaking gigs down the road.

Interesting, Sanders was asked by someone in the audience about whether “transparency” was the defining word of our new age of digital social sharing. He actually disagreed, saying:

“Anyone can be transparent. I believe the history books will say that social media was about ‘being helpful.’”

My many thanks to both Shirky and Sanders for sharing information that will help me be more successful in guiding marketing strategy and winning speaking opportunities. And through this blog post, I hope you benefit from their knowledge as well.

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Posted in Conferences, Social Networking, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Tito’s Vodka Mends My Heart at #SXSW

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

titos sticker

My favorite new brand story from the SXSW Interactive conference last week actually came from a brand that I thought I knew fairly well. At a small workshop called “Booze Blogging,” we tasted various cocktails and got to hear from Beth Bellanti-Walker, who worked on the start-up Tito’s Vodka brand, which is based in Austin, Texas. She filled in some blanks on the brand and shared some insights into the challenge of taking a small, meaningful brand to the big time.

Several years ago I first heard the fascinating story of Tito’s Vodka: A man named Tito Beveridge was a geophysicist with a side hobby of making flavored vodka for his friends. After years of friends’ encouragement and talking with bartenders who said they would love a smooth vodka that people could drink straight, he decided to learn how to distill his own liquor. Thanks to his scientific skills, passion for perfection, and 19 maxed-out credit cards, Tito got the first distillery license in Texas created a brilliant vodka that is distilled six times for a pure taste. One day a fan of his new vodka suggested that he enter it into the World Spirits Competition. Beveridge couldn’t attend himself, so he sent up a few bottles. It was named a Double Gold Medal winner.

Over time word of mouth fueled the expansion of Tito’s Vodka. Sales went from 1,000 cases in 1997 to currently more than 200,000 cases each year. During our session at SXSW, I learned a few other stories of the world of Tito and its bootstrap marketing. Beth essentially worked for free and spent most of her time stoking fans’ passion by responding to emails, managing a blog, and sending vodka to parties. According to Beth, “Everything about Tito’s marketing success has come from people’s love for the brand.”

She told us how Tito designed the label and logo for the brand by himself on his basement computer. Tito seems unconcerned with selling out or taking the world by storm. He is a complex guy who has several other hobbies and has some clever ideas about clean energy and improving the world.

I personally tried Tito’s roughly five years ago after reading about it on a marketing blog (that I can’t remember now), and I became one of these rabid fans. I enjoyed ritually mixing my martinis at home with Tito’s and loved taking friends down to my basement bar to give them a taste of this mysterious Texas concoction. I even enjoyed the process of finding a place to order it online, and waiting for a package to arrive weeks later. My friends would see or hear about Tito’s Vodka and say, “Hey, that’s the brand Bob loves.” And I enjoyed being the first guy to turn my friends onto the brand. The closest thing I can compare this to is when you become a fan of an upstart band and enjoy introducing the music to friends.

But my Tito’s fandom hit a bump a few years ago. A buddy of mine shot me an email and told me to look in The New York Times; he had just seen a full-page ad for Tito’s Vodka. Unfortunately, I wish he hadn’t told me about the ad, because it broke my heart. Here was my great little vodka brand advertising in one of the largest newspapers in the world. Tito’s Vodka had sold out.

In the two years or so since I saw this ad, I have reached for Tito’s Vodka less often in my liquor cabinet after a long day. I no longer raved about it to friends, and when I need to resupply I was more likely to grab Absolut at the nearby package store rather than order a Tito’s shipment. So I was eager to ask Beth why she and Tito embraced mass advertising on a brand that had such a special place in my heart. Her response, in a nutshell:

“That was a difficult decision for us and a large expense—our first advertisement in 12 years of making vodka. But our main challenge is that while people are discovering Tito’s through friends and blogs, the liquor market is dominated by wholesalers and distributors in individual states across the country. We had to get their attention by using the traditional advertising that they still believe is the key to success.”

Upon hearing this my love for Tito’s was rekindled. The print ad campaign made perfect business sense to me and I no longer felt that the brand was selling out. I happily ordered a Tito’s martini at my hotel bar that night. By hearing this inside story of how the brand was forced to embrace some amount of traditional advertising to keep its momentum going, I personally reconnected with Tito’s.

While this level of openness at the SXSW conference with 50 people was great, it shows that Tito’s Vodka and other small brands trying to make it big should be more careful when they risk losing the core fans that drive their early success. I wonder if Tito’s could have dumped the newspaper ads and worked harder to get its fans to call distributors and liquor stores to ask for the brand. Or Tito’s might have done more to let its fans know that the newspaper ad was coming and why.

I know it might sound strange to ask a brand to apologize for putting full-page ads in a newspaper, but in this new world of meaningful marketing it becomes critically important to think of your core fans first.

Posted in Conferences, Organizational Behavior, small business | 1 Comment »

Why Foursquare Ruled #SXSW

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

foursquare sxsw

Late Sunday night I got back from my first-ever trip to the much-discussed South by Southwest (SXSW) conference for Film, Music, and Interactive in Austin, Texas. After seeing many friends and other folks in the business rave and tweet about this event for a few years, I felt compelled to add yet another conference badge to my collection. Overall I found it to be one of the best conferences for digital marketing that I have attended in some time. That means something, because I think I’ve been to more than a dozen different digital shows in the past 24 months alone. Over the course of the next few blog posts I plan to share some of my biggest takeaways and examples of Marketing with Meaning.

First up is an example of a start-up digital service that used meaningful marketing to make the conference better for nearly everyone involved: Foursquare. For those who haven’t heard, Foursquare is a mobile tool that allows you to “check in” at locations where you physically appear—essentially a way of broadcasting to friends that you are, say, having a coffee at Starbucks, or waiting in line at the DMV. This is the leading brand in a new category of “geo-location” services. You might call it “Geo-Twitter”—in fact, you can update your Twitter and Facebook accounts with Foursquare when you check in around town.

SXSW is a very big event for the folks at Foursquare for many reasons. It is the place where partners and customers gather to see what’s new. Investors are lurking everywhere to spy the next hot winner. And some of the earliest early adopters and trendsetters (including a few celebrities) share their latest findings with their friends at SXSW.

So it is a clear business objective to own this event in every way possible. For most companies, this means paying sponsorship dollars to put your name everywhere, employing booth babes to walk around with branded snacks, and maybe hosting a giant beer-for-all for everyone at the event. But not Foursquare. Instead, Foursquare stuck with what makes its service special, and spent most of its time and money making it more so.

Foursquare is already a killer app for conferences. It is most effective when a large group of people who know each other and want to get together are located in a pretty close environment. This is exactly what conferences are all about. So instead of calling or texting to find out where your friends and contacts are, you simply see where they have recently checked in and walk over to the conference room, bar, or restaurant where they happen to be. This even makes it easy to “run into” people who you might unable to reach via email or telephone.

This is why Foursquare became so popular at SXSW in 2009. So the business decided to do more with this hyper-engaged, ultra-important audience in 2010. When we got off the plane in Austin and checked into the airport, we noticed that Foursquare had created special new features for SXSW participants. The main add was a set of special “badges” that you could unlock by performing various check-ins during the six-day event. Badges are a key element of the basic Foursquare service—providing you a fun way to show that you have, say, checked in at 50 different total places or from five airports or from a boat. They are fun for the user, and cleverly (and cheaply) train people to make Foursquare check-ins a habit. Some of the special SXSW badges include the “Austin Explorer” for hitting five locations in the city, and the “Hookup” for checking in at two different hotels. For me and our team, we found that these badges turned Foursquare into a living game that made some of the boring moments between sessions and meetings much more tolerable.

Foursquare did more than virtual badges, though. The firm partnered with specific locations such as the Pepsi Refresh Cafe and SXSW Web Awards to give people temporary tattoos to match their unlocked badges. And it partnered with PayPal to donate $.25 for every check-in to Haitian relief efforts. Foursquare even reported a running total of how much you had earned for Haiti. (I believe I hit more than $8.)

Only the folks at Foursquare know how much this modest expense in programming time delivered for its business at this big event. One key data point reported on its site shows that there were more than 15,000 badges awarded, including 6,025 versions of the Austin Explorer. That means that roughly 50% of the 12,000 people who went to the Interactive conference tried Foursquare.  According to this article, there were 300,000 check-ins in Austin during the event, and Foursquare added 100,000 users overall – “likely as a result of check-ins being broadcast to Twitter and Facebook.” This might have even helped the nascent company establish a business model; TechCrunch made the case that Foursquare could create a business around building similar special apps for other conferences.

So many thanks to Foursquare for helping me get a more out of my company’s significant time and money investment in sending me to SXSW. I will certainly repay the favor by giving this new service major attention in the months ahead.

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Posted in Agency Marketing, Applications, Conferences, mobile | 2 Comments »

Cincinnati #DHI09 Non-conference Presentation

Monday, September 28th, 2009
Saving Digital from Failure by Marketing with Meaning
View more presentations from Bob Gilbreath.

On Thursday and Friday last week my hometown of Cincinnati hosted its second annual Digital Hub Initiative Non-conference. I was able to deliver a keynote speech Friday, following in the footsteps of A-list speakers such as John Battelle, Peter Kim, Brad Berens, Allan Adamson, Pete Blackshaw, and Winston Binch. I was very proud to see our event attract a large, engaged crowd and I can’t wait to see how we take it to an even higher level next year.

Obviously I was speaking to share the concept of my new book, The Next Evolution of Marketing, and the topic of this blog, Marketing with Meaning. Every time I speak I like to try something new and personalize my presentation based on the specific audience at hand. For my speech on Friday I decided to come down hard on my fellow digital leaders for choosing to adapt to the existing, traditional, interruptive model of marketing, and I challenged the room to lead the move to meaningful marketing, which happens to provide a powerful path for digital to win.

I thought this built very well on earlier presentations in the day from Peter Kim and Brad Berens, who both showed how digital technology is a groundbreaking societal change. My link was to show that such a dramatic shift in society means that there must be a similar dramatic shift in marketing strategy. I also used my presentation to share how a simple model of focusing on business objectives and higher-level insights can lead to meaningful marketing ideas in no time. You can see my slides above.

Overall I think it went pretty well.  The Twitter feedback was strong and several people came up to me to praise it. Hopefully a couple hundred digital marketers take my challenge and go back to their offices Monday ready to lead!

What I really love about this conference is that it is a way for the digital leaders of Cincinnati to practice Marketing with Meaning. Led by Jack Streitmarter and a diverse group of volunteers, the Digital Hub Initiative is about attracting, developing, and retaining digital talent in the Cincinnati area by investing in great events such as this. I was proud to see many groups come together and pool their efforts around this effort, including local chapters of the AdClub and American Marketing Association, big companies such as P&G and Kroger, and diverse digital services companies such as Nielsen and Empower.

Thanks again to the DHI leaders volunteers for inviting me to speak, and to all of the volunteers who pulled off a great show.

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Posted in Conferences, Presentations | 1 Comment »

Best Buy Plays a Meaningful Note with Instruments

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

best buy pandora

In my final post of takeaways from last week’s iMedia Brand Summit I wanted to give props to a competitor who I admire, Clark Kokich, Chairman of Razorfish. Clark got the second day of the conference started by asking the room to think less about digital tactics and more about marketing strategy. He shared a handful of examples of work that brands are doing that start with big, strategic ideas that happen to lead to some killer digital work. For example, the Nike Human Race 10k, and Fiat’s new tool that allows people to upload information about how their driving is impacting CO2 emissions. But my favorite example, and something I just had to share here, is that of Razorfish’s work with Best Buy in selling musical instruments. This story shows how getting into a new product category is a great way to launch with meaningful marketing at the center.

Business Challenge

Just a little more than a year ago Best Buy first announced it was getting into the musical instrument business after a successful pilot in a handful of stores. This seems like a no-brainer. After all, Best Buy has one of the largest selections of music and music equipment, and its vast stores certainly have enough room for some instruments. According to Kokich, “They could have just run ads telling people that Best Buy now sells instruments.” But the reality is that this is not a big market, and it is currently dominated by specialty retailers such as Guitar Center. So the challenge for Best Buy was: How can we stand out in an existing market that needs a lot more buyers?

Insight

Best Buy saw huge untapped potential among adults who always wanted to learn how to play an instrument. The rise of games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band showed the potential.  But the biggest barrier is that many people are afraid and intimidated. People who work at guitar stores are mostly “stoners… who resent you for being able to buy the instruments that they cannot afford.”  So many potential buyers hate even going into the leading instrument stores.

Solution

Best Buy’s strategy was to “become a partner in helping you rediscover your love for music.” And by starting with this overall, customer-focused strategy, it was clear that just running a 30-second ad wouldn’t work.  The company started with the purchase point, and created a “store within a store” with trained musical instrument specialists. Each store also offers group and individual lessons. In terms of marketing support, digital has a leading position. Barry Judge, Best Buy’s CMO said this about the company’s approach:

“Our musical instruments department (in about 100 stores nationwide) is all about experience. Everything is plugged in and ready to play. The staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and approachable. We carry professional-grade gear from brands like Fender, Marshall, Roland, Yamaha, and Drum Workshop. We are working on building awareness of our musical instruments department, but more importantly, building credibility and authenticity. We hope to inspire people.

Digital allows us to connect with our customers in new and exciting ways, and our digital experience is meant to tap into that potential. Later this summer, we want our customers to create “dream rigs” from our inventory and share them with their friends on the social platforms they use.  We will be using the power of digital to let our employees, musicians from communities around the country, and our customers share their passion for music and their insights. Instead of just telling people that we have these great instruments, we want to show them, and help them experience them in the digital space in unique ways that go beyond catalogs of products.”

Kokich described how his team is inspired by the call to “become a partner in helping people rediscover their love for music.”  One example is a unique advertising effort with Pandora. Again, instead of just skinning Pandora with big ads for Best Buy, the company created a unique ad (above) that actually shows what instruments are being played in each song. (On a side note, I can’t find that tool anywhere at Pandora–what a lost opportunity!) He shared some glimpses of work in progress including Facebook tools to help people form a band and ways for people to build an interactive wish list. This should be an exciting space to watch in the months ahead.

Results/Conclusion

It is too early to call this a success, as Best Buy has only just begun supporting this effort in earnest. Of course, I welcome any comments from Barry Judge (@bestbuycmo). But the real lesson here is that a new marketing strategy is a great opportunity to rethink your approach to marketing–and make it meaningful from day 1.

BONUS: Kokich on Client Organizations

One of the biggest challenge of shifting to a meaningful marketing model is the existing organizational behavior of clients. As our boss, Sir Martin Sorrell said at the P&G Global Alumni Reunion back in June, “The amount of time we see our clients wasting on bureaucracy and infighting is appalling.” Kokich also drew attention to this key issue in his presentation. He made the point that “digital” can be sales, CRM, advertising, research, and customer service.  But clients have kept each of these functions in separate silos (“and they all hate each other”) for so long that it is difficult to take advantage of the opportunities.

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Posted in Conferences, Retailers | 1 Comment »

A Meaningful 90-Second Sales Pitch

Monday, September 21st, 2009

imedia card 1

Last week I had the chance to present our Marketing with Meaning concept and hand out copies of my new book, The Next Evolution of Marketing, at the iMedia Brand Summit in San Diego. There were some excellent case studies, including a Dunkin’ Donuts case that I wrote about here on Friday. But today I wanted to share an interesting experiment of my own that shows how meaningful marketing can even be the basis of a 90-second new business pitch.

One of the recurring iMedia events is something that its organizers call “One Minute Matchups.”  It’s essentially a speed-dating concept in which “buyers” sit at tables around a room and “sellers” rotate every minute or two and pitch their product or service. As odd as it may seem, it can actually be very useful. For both buyers and sellers it is a low-investment way to quickly size up whether there is enough interest to merit a follow-up discussion, and both sides get to weed out those that are not a great fit.

In March of this year I first experienced the “One Minute Matchups” concept at iMedia’s Breakthrough conference. In this case, I was a “buyer” and many specialty media vendors and digital services companies rotated to speak with me. I was disappointed, though, that nearly all of the 40 sellers I met with had done zero research on my agency. So most of the first 90 seconds was me answering their question, “What does Bridge Worldwide do?”  Needless to say, I didn’t find any great matches.

But this time was a little bit different. On Thursday evening, just 36 hours before my flight out, I got an email from the folks at iMedia with a list of companies that I would be matched up with. I actually had no idea that my keynote address would afford me this opportunity. As an agency guy at this conference I was to be in the “seller” position, so now it would be my turn to see if I could do a better job of pitching. I huddled with Jonathan Richman, my Director of Business Development (and top blogger over at Dose of Digital). We quickly decided that I had to do something meaningful in my matchups, and likely something related to my keynote topic. We decided that the best thing to do would be to bring each company one or two ideas for how they might practice meaningful marketing. I stayed up until 1 a.m. that night coming up with ideas by using their websites and my gut as a guide.  Then on Friday Jonathan and Carole Amend from our team worked on turning these ideas into blown-up cards with the idea on one side and my contact information on the other.  I picked them up Saturday morning on the way to the airport and they looked great.  The image at the top of the screen is one example (the person from Atkins didn’t show up), and at the bottom you can see the contact info side.

Now, let me pause to say that it’s very, very difficult to sell a full-service digital agency like Bridge Worldwide in only 90 seconds. While brand managers may feel free to “date” specialty service providers, working with a full-service agency is like getting married–as you typically stay with the agency for a long time and make them strategic partners on the core business. Maybe one or two of the marketers in attendance expected to hire an agency sometime soon. My real goal was to leave each person with a positive brand experience with Bridge Worldwide, so that when they are looking for a new i-agency at some future time they remember to give us a call.

It was an interesting experience sharing my ideas at the event.  My time with the first group of about 25 marketers came before I had given my keynote speech, so they had no clue who I was or what I was speaking about. My approach was certainly unlike others that the marketers had experienced. About one-third of them reacted very positively and were appreciative to get something personalized and clever.  The other two-thirds had a hard time figuring out how to respond, mainly because they thought I was selling them a specific idea. So there was some defensiveness (“we already have an agency”) and dismissal (“we tried that once and it didn’t work).  I felt pretty good, though, because I knew my keynote the next day would help connect the dots in their minds.

Sure enough, when I went to the next batch of matchups just minutes after leaving the stage of my keynote address, every marketer I spoke to understood what I was doing. I also changed my talking points a bit to adjust, for example, by starting off with “I’m not selling you an idea; I’m selling you on how we work as an agency partner.” People were overwhelmingly positive and excited to hear the ideas I shared, and a handful promised to reach out on some specific work.

But one of the best things about this approach was that I really enjoyed these one-minute matchups.  The decision to bring a unique idea for everyone forced me to do my homework on the companies, and better prepared me for longer discussions with prospects over meals and cocktails.  The ideas gave me more confidence in sitting down with a stranger for 90 seconds, and I felt great knowing that I would be giving them something worth remembering when they got back to the office later that week.  This approach was more meaningful to me, too.

Part of me thought that I shouldn’t write this blog post and share this idea with the world. I wondered if now everybody else would take the idea and outdo us at the next iMedia show.  But the reality is that most people just don’t bother to make the effort. It’s too easy to stick with the traditional path and “rules” of the game, whether you’re a salesperson or a big brand. But it goes to show that our success is less about what our competitors do, and more about how we take advantage of new opportunities. And as my friend Brian McNamara always said, “If it was easy, anyone could do it.”

imedia card 2

Posted in Agency Marketing, B2B, Conferences, Organizational Behavior | 1 Comment »

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