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Visiting the Valley: Trending Topics

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend a day out in Silicon Valley, the land of digital start-ups just outside of San Francisco. A friend of mine who works for a major global manufacturer is a “marketer in residence” at one of the largest VC firms. He invited me up for a day to visit a handful of this VC’s seedlings and a few other friendly investors. It was only a day, but thanks to smart scheduling and the proximity of so many start-ups, I was able to get an outstanding firsthand view of the ideas and people that make this a hotbed of innovation. During the next two weeks I will share my takeaways here.

One of the things I found interesting about my day of meetings in Silicon Valley was how the same questions and opportunities are on the minds of so many people. Likely because of the interconnected nature of relationships and critical mass of talent here, innovation topics that spread throughout the world seem to gestate here first. In no particular order, below are some of the discussion topics that arose during my visit. If you’re not talking about them today, you probably will be tomorrow.

Rewarding Engagement

One of the companies I met with was going through a “pivot”–which in the start-up business means that your original idea that got funding didn’t work, and you are trying to shift to a new, usually related idea instead of just giving up and giving the money back. This company was toying with an idea around the concept of “rewarding engagement.”  The most common example of this is when new mobile software developers attempt to increase their download and install base by offering some kind of virtual incentive. Companies such as Groupon and Zynga Poker have offered up Tap Tracks song credits or Farmville Bucks, for example.

Some might argue that rewarding engagement is a variation on Marketing with Meaning. After all, the consumer gets something of value, the software company gets a bigger user base, and the media company gets paid only when these two are successfully paired up. However, I have many doubts. The problem is that incentivized downloads are meaningful for the consumer, but not really related to strong brand marketing. They encourage people to download something not for a brand-related benefit, but in order to get something in what is often a completely different product or service.

Apple agrees that this is not meaningful, but for a different reason. Just a few weeks ago the company began cutting off apps that were using this practice, claiming it is a violation of its terms of service. Apple does not like the fact that “buying downloads” like this can send apps to the top of its Top Downloads list overnight. Apple knows that people expect this list to be the very-best-quality games and utilities, rather than the ones that gave away the most virtual cash.

I think it’s pretty obvious that these kinds of incentivized downloads are not going to earn the kinds of frequent users that app developers want. Looks like gaming the Apple app store is the only, now impossible, goal of this gimmick. I’d look for this trend to fade quickly.

Influencer Rankings

We had an opportunity to swing by the bustling office of Klout, a company that is rapidly becoming a killer app for influencer marketing. The guys at Klout say they are “an analytics company that happens to run campaigns for marketers and their agencies.”  For those who don’t know, Klout offers a score or ranking of people based on their social media profile. Although the tool has a lot of opportunities for improvement, I love the fact that it can be used today by brands that want to, say, pick the top 100 people to invite to an event or prioritize the high-ranking people who call the telephone complaint line. I was mildly proud to learn that my own Klout score of “51″ puts me in the top 20% of all profiles. Such a scoring system also means that people will work even harder to boost their scores and influence.

Although the company did not start off as an engine for marketers’ use, it is coming around to this opportunity quickly. I got to see a big brand that is using Klout to invite the top influencers in a specific topic to join an invite-only club, brands are starting to use it to see who their most important Facebook “Likes” are, and a major job search company is starting to add the score to people’s profiles. A new Klout.com is on the way, which promises further improvements and will include more than just your Twitter feed in calculating influence.

Building Dependencies

One well-known and respected investor we met with spent some time sharing his team’s formula for picking winners in this noisy environment. He specifically mentioned that his partners look for new businesses that “build dependencies” among their customers. This means creating a company that becomes so necessary and ingrained with how customers operate that it keeps their business for the long haul and keeps competitors out.

Omniture is a great example of a company that does this, by locking businesses into a system for measuring their digital customer engagement. The more you use Omniture, the more tightly it is linked to your way of working. And the fixed costs of implementing the tool dissuade companies from bringing in another way of measuring results. Dunnhumby does this by creating a tool that retailers and their suppliers can use to understand purchase habits and provide personalized offers. Salesforce.com takes this to the next level by not only creating its own killer apps, but by allowing its platform to be used by thousands of third-party application developers.

Companion Viewing

Content is on the minds of start-ups, marketers, and investors. Many are coming to see that content–not channel delivery or advertising interruption–is king. Nothing is more valuable than an aggregated audience that is voluntarily giving you its increasingly valuable time. And speaking of content, television continues to be a media vehicle for content that dominates all others. It combines sight/sound/motion, mass delivery, and an established ecosystem. And television is only getting better for consumers, thanks to greater on-demand options and bigger/better sets.

While some believe that television will be substituted with new screens such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets, some early consumer research suggests that new screens are additive to the television viewing experience. According to a recent Nielsen/Yahoo! study, 86% of U.S. mobile Internet users watch TV with mobile devices in hand. Of that group, 40% use devices for social networking, and 33% use apps. The concept of “companion viewing” suggests that television content creators–and marketers as well–should consider using these additional laptop/mobile/tablet interfaces to add value to the experience. If you are like me, you might find yourself keeping an iPad close to you on the couch while watching a program. During commercial breaks or when I want to look something up related to the show’s content, I increasingly hit the TiVo pause button and pull up Google to satisfy my need for information.

To date, only a handful of television programs are taking advantage of this trend. The History Channel lets you pull up Tweets of fellow viewers during shows such as Top Gear, and Top Chef Masters lets you rate the players’ dishes for yourself. Some new televisions are coming with interactive features built in, but I believe it will always be easier to use a separate screen/device to interact. If programs truly integrated smartphones and tablets for companion viewing, we might see live stats and replays-on-demand during sporting events, or a moving map with vacation suggestions during a travel show.

At the end of the day, not all of these are truly “new” ideas spun from the epicenter of digital innovation, but they might give you a jump-start on what’s coming next–before the annual “What’s Hot for 2012″ lists start propagating.

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How CAPTCHA Ads Stall the Evolution of Marketing

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

In my role as strategy group leader at Bridge Worldwide, I am often asked by my team or clients to weigh in on what’s next. And in my 15 years of working in the digital marketing space, I’ve seen a lot of bad ideas. Usually the bad ideas can be picked apart strategically as an internal exercise and we move on with life. But some bad ideas not only threaten to waste clients’ dollars—they threaten the very evolutionary survival and success of the digital marketing industry. Some ideas are evil in that they wish to bring marketing back to a time when we treated people like captive cattle at the impression trough. The people working on them are not necessarily evil, but such companies need to be called out. Today I would like to share why I am firmly against “CAPTCHA Advertising”—in hopes that you help save everything we’ve worked for in the next evolution of marketing.

For background, CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test. This is a tool that websites often use to ensure that an action is completed by an actual human being, rather than a spamming bot. Here’s an example from a company called reCAPTCHA.

If you have left comments on blogs or registered for just about anything online you have likely completed a CAPTCHA. They can sometimes be difficult to read, and are made more difficult to read as spammers get better and better. But for now they are a necessary evil on the Web.

The Advertising Innovators Strike

For decades now there are many innovators and inventors in the world who dream of grabbing a piece of the multibillion-dollar advertising market by creating a new, owned “network” for marketers to hock their wares. The result is everything from advertising on airport runways to gas pumps to sheep grazing in a field. Back in 2005, Ilya Vedrashko, a marketing thinker I admire, wondered on his blog why no one had tried to turn these CAPTCHAs into an advertising medium.

A few years later Carnegie Mellon University created a system called reCAPTCHA which asked users to enter words from scanned books. This allowed the school to both block spammers and digitize many out-of-print books. It was a novel way to do something positive with a chore done by millions of people each day. In 2009, Google acquired the tool and continued to use it to digitize its book collection as well as the historic printings of The New York Times.  Another novel improvement on the CAPTCHA is something Facebook recently introduced: A test for people who lost their passwords in which you must correctly pick out a picture of a friend.

Alas, other not-so-noble ideas took hold after five years when a handful of companies began creating ad unit CAPTCHAs. Instead of deciphering a meaningless word or helping digitize a textbook, companies such as Solve Media ask consumers to write out a brand’s tag line or selling point, as in the example for Dr Pepper at the top of this page. The companies claimed that this was good for consumers, who no longer had to type in something that is often illegible; it offers advertisers a new, “captive” audience who was forced to interact with brand messaging; and it promised website owners the opportunity to further monetize content through ad revenue sharing. And in the past few months the hype around Solve Media and other CAPTCHA ad competitors is getting deafening.

I’ve been quietly ignoring these ads and pushing people away from it for some time. Until now my one public comment on the medium was in the comments of an iMedia article that claimed Solve Media as something that creates “real engagement.” But recently a client and friend of mine directly asked me for my point of view, and I put together an analysis that I would like to share with you here: The 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use CAPTCHA Advertising:

1. It’s Not Strategic

Such ad units are clearly a tactic, not a strategy, and therefore not worth much time at all for marketers to assess their value. At most, a brand manager who is running an awareness campaign online would expect that her media-buying agency is keeping an eye on the CAPTCHA ad space for really cheap CPMs. Already most marketers don’t spend enough time looking at bigger, strategic opportunities in digital through social, mobile, and CRM.

2. It’s Not Scalable

Solve Media and its competitors are targeting the big marketers who spend millions of dollars a year on mass marketing campaigns. What they fail to recognize, however, is that these companies want big numbers for their impression bucks. And the numbers on CAPTCHAs just don’t add up. Solve Media claims that there are about 300 million CAPTCHAs solved per day around the world. That’s not many impressions in a planet of 7 billion people who see about 3,000 ad impressions per day. Let’s say a full third of that comes from the U.S., so that’s 100 million CAPTCHAs per day for 100 million households in the U.S. That means most of us probably “solve” one CAPTCHA per day.

That’s right, even if 100% of these were by these ad networks, you would have one impression per household per day. Imagine if people saw one TV commercial per day, or one print/outdoor/banner ad per day. If there are a hundred total companies advertising on this medium, then your brand might only serve one ad per person per quarter. Why waste the time and energy for so little of an impact?

Ah, but Solve Media might just increase the number of CAPTCHAs that people have to solve per day! Imagine if people had to solve five or 10 of these per day?! (Step back and think of doing that! You’ve got to type in 10 brand slogans per day just to read a few articles!) But it’s still too little, and starts to anger the people who use your websites. (See below for more on that.)

3. Results Are Unproven

Marketers want to see the data and results before testing their budgets, so it was smart for Solve Media to invest in a study to gauge consumer interest and effectiveness of its new tactic. However, it is still far too early to trust in what little information has been shared so far. The company frequently quotes its “Wharton Study” that was done in summer 2010. Unfortunately this is the only data I can critique, and there are a few big issues with it.

In the study, 234 college students were asked to read an article. One leg had to sit through an interstitial ad between two pages of the article, which you might recognize as the kind of ad that you are forced to sit through before getting to content that you want to read or view. It’s so annoying that most websites won’t put it into use for fear of losing visitors. The second leg had no interstitial, but readers were asked to type in an advertising phrase in order to vote in a poll at the end of the article. By choosing interstitials as the comparison leg—one of the most annoying ad formats that exist—Solve Media stacked the deck in its favor in terms of measuring annoyance in a User Enjoyment score that came out flat between the two.

The big data quoted in the experiment is that Brand and Message Recall were much higher for those who had to type in the brand message with a CAPTCHA unit versus an interstitial. This makes sense, as people who have to write something down naturally will remember it better. But, again, there are issues: First, every new form of digital interruption I have seen has similar stronger numbers than “older” ad units, simply because people have not learned to ignore the new format. Second, the survey was given only 5 minutes after the ads, so the large Recall number does not necessarily translate to memory in the days later when someone is making a purchase at the store. Meanwhile Recall tests with TV advertising typically call people 48 hours after the survey to see if they still really remember what brand was advertised.

These are major flaws in the research, and marketers deserve more proof before handing over their shrinking budget dollars.

4. Too Little Benefit for Publishers

Solve Media and its competitors claim that this new ad format is a boon for content publishers and webmasters. They claim that their revenue sharing model is a way for people to keep getting valuable, free content. But the websites that have used these tools are seeing little benefit so far. Solve Media pays a whole 10 to 20 cents per CAPTCHA solved. Adverlab points to some interesting comments from websites that have tried the service, including:

“So, basically, if you annoy the crap out of 1000 of your visitors with these things, they’ll give you, the webmaster, 15 cents on average.”

“The payout threshold is a whopping $200…will take me 3 years to reach.”

Although the payout numbers are small for publishers, it seems that the spam rate gets a lot higher when you put Solve Media’s system into place. As one commenter in this article points out the fundamental issue: “Advertisers love clear (easy to read), consistent messaging (same answer every time). Spammers love easy to read images that always decode to the same CAPTCHA answer.”

5. The Risk of Angering Customers Is Too High

Let’s face it; our consumers have become tough and demanding, especially after surviving years of pop-ups, scam/spam email, spyware, privacy violations, and hacked laptops. They have a very low trust for advertising overall and digital “innovation” like this in particular. In fact, a recent survey by AdAge and IPSOS Observer found that digital formats take up the top four spots in consumers’ most-disliked ad platforms (in order: mobile, email, social, and websites). A very large and growing percentage of people feel that they have a right to skip pre-roll video ads and install banner ad and cookie blockers on their browsers. So a new “unbeatable” forced ad will leave a lot of people angered.

This particular ad unit feels like a punishment, and while a few marketing bloggers might say this is a clever idea, go check out some real consumers’ comments on Reddit or this take from Gizmodo. And it only takes a small amount of angry consumers to make this look like a bad idea quickly. If, say, only 10% of people decide not to buy your brand because of this kind of advertising, it might take 10 or 100 people to be slightly positively impacted enough by the CAPTCHA ad to make up for this loss.

And while these new ad companies say that they started the business in part because the old, hard-to-read CAPTCHAs were frustrating for consumers, now they are creating new, video ad units. So where you used to have to just decipher a phrase (branded or not) to comment on that article, you will increasingly have to sit through a video.

Conclusion

Along with these logical, strategic arguments against CAPTCHA Advertising, I feel compelled to add a personal point of view: This type of marketing represents everything I have worked against in my career, and it violates the Marketing with Meaning concept that I have been driving in this space for years. It treats our precious, loyal consumers as bad children who must be forced to memorize our brand assets. It seems aimed at tricking people into remembering or liking a brand rather than earning the business with great products and meaningful marketing.

We need to stand up against these kinds of advertising ideas because they lure marketers into believing that the old, interruptive, tell-and-sell ways can still work in the post-digital age.

UPDATE: Since posting this, two entrepreneurs have approached me with “better” ways of turning CAPTHCAs into advertising models and asked me for advice.  If you, too, think you have such an answer, please don’t contact me with it.  In case it was not clear above, I do not believe there is a “good” way to to advertising in this format.  Please put your great brainpower and entrepreneurial spirit into truly meaningful marketing.  Thank you!

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5 Digital Predictions from a Brand Marketer’s Mentality

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

It seems like just yesterday that we entered the second decade of the 21st century and were beset by a bevy of predictions from gurus about what will come in 2011. As a digital strategist myself, I am often called on by our clients to interpret the tea leaves of change in our space—after all, many decisions will be made and money will be moved among the new-new things. Ironically, I have found that the more time I spend thinking about new digital media and start-ups, the more I am drawn to old lessons that I learned in working on new products as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble.

Way back in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, I worked in marketing on brands such as Tide and Mr. Clean, and led a dozen product initiatives—including a few major successes (Mr. Clean Magic Eraser) and some spectacular failures (Fit Fruit & Vegetable Wash). I saw patterns in these launches and learned recurring marketing lessons. Interestingly, these lessons seem to hold true in the world of digital start-ups—as entrepreneurs and their investors travel through the same world of 4Ps, 3Cs, and WHO/WHAT/HOW.

I believe that we can make smarter investment decisions about how to use digital tools in our marketing by applying our brand-building frameworks to these start-ups. Here are five trends that my brand marketer intuition suggests will play out in 2011 and beyond:

1. Sales of Smartphones Will Beat Nearly Every Analyst Prediction

Nielsen predicts U.S. smartphone penetration at more than 50% in 2011. Pricewaterhouse Coopers forecasts global smartphone penetration will be 17% by 2014 (55% in developed nations). Verizon began this year by taking its earnings up due to rising smartphone revenues, and just predicted that its percentage of customers with smartphones will rise to 50% in 2011, up from 26% in 2010 and 15% in 2009. Predictions of new technology adoption traditionally get ahead of reality, but I believe several basic consumer and market forces will drive Web- and app-enabled smartphones to beat what most analysts and industry players dare imagine.

First, people already have a habit of upgrading their mobile phones relatively frequently. Unlike the laptop market where people prefer to delay upgrades due to high costs and the complexity of moving software and files, we find it easy to upgrade our phones annually. Contracts are always churning, and smartphones are the only devices that the large pool of manufacturers and service providers are advertising—because they are more profitable than other, older product lines. Just yesterday I saw an advertisement for a $9.99 Android-equipped smartphone.

Another driver of the habit is the social nature of mobile devices. Smartphone owners barely hesitate to show off vacation photos or update their Facebook status. They have become visible markers of the status of access—and no one wants to have the oldest phone in the club.

The product benefits are also very clear. Smartphones unlock access to thousands of value-added apps, ranging from time-killing games to productivity-building tools. It is rare to have a product category that provides access to so much more value—perhaps the only comparison is broadband Internet access, which also beat many expectations in its rollout.

Marketers must focus their attention on smartphones, mobile Web access, and app development in the year ahead. With the rapid rise of these devices we will see a corresponding explosion in tools such as promotion-seeking and price-checking apps in-store.

(Final note: In case you think it’s impossible to find a technology that beats predictions, no one predicted the huge numbers that Apple’s iPad hit this week, either.)

2. Build and Bet on Apps with a Clear, Focused User Benefit

In large part due to the growth of smartphones, an increasing number of brands have become interested in developing apps or partnering with mobile app makers. In either case it is important to think of apps as new products, and evaluate them based on the classic core concept questions: What is it? How does it work? And when should I use it?

Through this classic concept lens, start-ups such as Foursquare begin to look questionable. The service allows people to “check into” locations, yet offers no single, focused benefit aside from the novelty factor. No wonder that only 4% of those in the U.S. have ever used a location-based service, and Foursquare is now promising to add some real, tangible benefits in the months ahead.

On the other hand, some apps and brands will struggle because they offer too many benefits. Google, for example, keeps adding so many services to its broad audience that its users cannot keep track of what’s next. Google has a mobile app that just added a photo-based search capability. But its early visual searches are too broad—so that specific images are hard to find and results are generic. Instead, look for a rise of more focused search apps, such as Snooth, a wine review guide that also uses image search for the specific purpose of scanning wine bottle labels and pulling up focused information.

In the year ahead I would bet on apps that similarly focus on a single benefit to a focused target audience. For example, AisleBuyer brings grocery store self-scanning to your mobile device. This is a clear, focused benefit for both shoppers and retail stores—and by hooking users with this benefit, it can gradually add access to reviews, coupons, and loyalty programs.

3. Groupon Will Lose Its Luster Unless It Becomes a Consumer Habit

Groupon raised eyebrows in our industry at the end of 2010 when it reportedly turned down a $6 billion buyout offer from Google, and then made plans to raise $1 billion in VC funding. There is some justification for the excitement—Groupon has more than 35 million members worldwide, and its revenue is on a $500 million annual pace. The company has tapped into a clear consumer benefit—saving money—and it has unlocked marketing budgets of local businesses.

These dynamics have helped Groupon win with awareness and trial, but I worry that habit formation is a risk in its business model. Those like me who have experimented with Groupon as a user might agree that while the initial excitement of a great deal is there, the honeymoon soon wears off. The company’s daily email becomes an annoyance over time, and its offers vary wildly—recently ranging from a nursery painting service to an anti-LeBron James T-shirt. And because it depends on a group of people to act, there is often disappointment when not enough savers sign up. I believe this will mirror some of the initial hype and gradual decline of interest around online auctions. (For another smart user+marketer take on Groupon that is consistent with mine see the Experience Matters blog).

I believe Groupon-like features will pop up in existing online and physical stores in the year ahead as retailers experiment and build off the publicity around Groupon. Walmart, for example, launched a program called CrowdSaver, which first offered an 18% discount on plasma TVs when 5,000 people “Liked” the offer on Facebook. And focused interest businesses such as Restaurant.com are offering $100 dining credits for $40.

4. 3D TV Does Not Provide Enough Consumer Value to Take Off

All too often, the breathless desire and combined forces of consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers attempt to ignite a new wave of home entertainment technology but fail to win in the marketplace. Many have pegged their hopes on 3D television and filled their shelves with related equipment in hopes of a happy holiday buying season. Alas it didn’t take off this year and I believe prospects are low in 2011 and beyond. A Nielsen survey shows that only 3% of people in North America said they Definitely Would Buy a 3-D TV in the next year.

The first problem for 3D peripherals and programming is the significant purchase barriers that exist. Consumers loathe wearing special glasses and replacing the lovely flat-screen LCDs that they just brought home one or two years ago. More importantly, the value of a 3D home experience seems small. There will be few home movies and cable channels in 3D for some time, and a 3D picture is not significantly better than a high-quality HDTV at a fraction of the price. Analysts even say that 3D movie production will scale back as consumer interest wanes.

This follows the path of Blu-ray players and movies, which have also failed to connect with consumers on a large-scale basis. Blu-ray offers an improved picture quality, but most consumers have not seen enough of a difference to make it worth replacing their old DVD players and movie collections. Meanwhile, consumers are aggressively buying up services such as Netflix and Amazon, which allow movie downloading to their laptops, iPads, Xbox, and TiVo. Ironically, the quality of on-demand movies is usually significantly worse than even basic DVD quality—proving that the innovation consumers value today lies in access, not pixels.

5. Augmented Reality Fails the User Experience Test

I have to end my list by pouring a bucket of cold, harsh reality over the head of Augmented Reality, or “AR.” You may have encountered this buzz-builder in 2010—AR essentially is the use of a digital device to overlay physical objects with information or entertainment. This most often consists of a mobile app that uses image recognition and GPS. Examples are starting to pop up in app stores—such as an ATM locator that recognizes nearby buildings, a tool that guides you back to where you parked your car, and the Pocket Universe Virtual Astronomy app that really is a blast with kids in the backyard on a starry night.

The concept of such AR apps is exciting, but the use test is where it all falls apart. Put simply, it is far too difficult to hold your mobile device in front of you to enjoy the core benefits of AR. If you thought driving while texting was bad, imagine driving while holding an iPhone and peering through the tiny screen to look for a virtual ATM sign or coffee discount. It’s just not happening.

AR technology and its range of imaginative apps will not hit the mainstream until we have a better way to overlay digital information before our physical lives. For example, within a few years I believe we will be able to buy smart sunglasses that act as video screens, or even beam information directly onto our retinas. I predict that such devices will be commonplace by the year 2020, and of course come first from Apple (iFrame, anyone?).

Conclusion

Of course, I cannot guarantee that my predictions are accurate—if I could, my stock returns last year would have looked a lot better. But I can guarantee that you will make better decisions about which digital innovations are worthy of your investment in time and money by analyzing them through the lens of the great consumer marketer that you are. Digital may seem confusing and overhyped at times, but you cannot go wrong by centering yourself in consumer and concept understanding.

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Tales from the Sky Club: Execution Is Everything

Friday, November 12th, 2010

Here’s a quick reminder for all of you would-be meaningful marketers out there: Execution is everything.  This reminder comes thanks to a company called Pure Energy, which makes a line of “charging pads” for mobile phones and other small consumer electronics products.

I’ve been on the road a lot lately, and the one place where I seem to continually end up is the Delta Sky Club of whichever city I happen to be flying into, out of, or through.  The Sky Club is an oasis of relaxation and concentration during the countless hours of waiting for a delayed flight.  In fact, I’ve spent so much time there lately that I’m starting to see them appear in my dreams. Anyway, during the past few months I noticed that my Sky Clubs have sprouted something called a “Wild Charger” scattered on tabletops throughout the facilities. After watching people puzzle over them for weeks, I finally took the opportunity to see what they were about for myself.

With a little examination and a somewhat helpful table tent, I figured out that these are a type of device charger you can use to juice up without fighting for an outlet with the road warriors next to you. At first I just tossed my iPhone onto the charging mat, but nothing happened.  The helpful sign said I needed to ask someone at the front desk for a charging device, so I did.  The Delta folks first warned me that “I hear they don’t work for Blackberry.”  Then they gave me a key chain full of connectors in return for keeping my driver’s license hostage. I returned to my seat, plugged the right adapter into my phone, set it on the charging pad, and saw… nothing. No charge, no magic, no juice. I double-checked to see that the thing was plugged in, tried another nearby pad, and got the same nothing. I even tried charging my iPad. Alas, I gave up and retrieved my license, letting the staff know that “they don’t work on iPhones either.”

Thus, a great idea in meaningful marketing falls flat because of poor execution. I’m sure Pure Energy has grand plans behind its tie-in with Delta Sky Club. After all, can you imagine a better-concentrated target audience? What a great way to engage them with a little free energy during their free time. And I’m sure Delta was more than willing to offer the featured space as a way to give visitors another perk.

But execution is everything, my friends, and Pure Energy is not only losing potential customers, but it is generating negative word-of-mouth every time their system fails. Contrast this to Samsung, whose recharging stations in more than 150 airports and college campuses keep working well and winning fans.

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Product Demos That Earn Attention

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

A little more than a year ago I wrote one of my most-visited posts about the power of engaging product demonstrations. If you haven’t read it, take a look. The purpose of this post is to revisit demonstrations with two killer examples that I saw just yesterday morning.

First, there’s the video above of the new Dyson Air Multiplier fan, above. The next chapter in Dyson’s re-think of age-old contraptions, this time we see a playful series of balloons sent through Dyson fans. The result is clever and interesting, and perfectly highlights the reason for shelling out a few hundred dollars for a new fan: It’s simply gorgeous. This two-minute film has been viewed by more than 725,000 people since late May.

The lesson here is that new products can be incredibly interesting. We like seeing what’s new, and continue to spend money on innovative items that can make our lives better. It’s the same reason that people spend billions of dollars a year on products sold in TV infomercials; in fact, I recall TiVo reporting that some of the least-skipped ads are two-minute infomercials.

The second example was forwarded to me from a friend. Instead of a new innovation, this is a series of videos for a brand in one of the oldest commodity product categories on the market: the DieHard battery. You might remember the old DieHard commercials from the ’70s and ’80s that put car batteries in torture tests; for example, this ad in which a car on a frozen lake starts after sitting on the ice all winter.

Now DieHard is back in the demo business in a much more updated way, showing that even an existing brand and category has the ability to amaze. The dramatic movie-announcer-like voiceover is back, but just about everything else is different. Check it out:

There are some other examples of the ads that I love. For example, this one of innovative musician Reggie Watts. It’s pretty easy to measure success of these demos based on the number of views. Reggie Watts is getting up toward 900,000 views, and the Gary Numan example above is at 75,000 in less than a week.

While these companies are polar opposites in many ways, their viral product demos have a few things in common:

  1. Presented in video form, which allows for a full sight, sound, and motion experience as well as easy sharing
  2. Brought to life in very creative ways, not just a side-by-side demo with blue liquid and before-and-after shots
  3. Go beyond the 30-second interruption, allowing space for a story to develop and for content to be enjoyed, on the consumer’s terms

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Cannes Takeaways Days 3/4 #canneslions

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

As we get closer to our Burning Question seminar on Friday I’ve had less time than usual to relay my thoughts and discussions here in this space. I’m forced to combine topics from Wednesday and Thursday (today) here in Cannes, and in fact I only wanted to touch on one takeaway today—but it’s a good one.

Content Creators Are Waiting for Brands

Lots of people have written or spoken about how brands are becoming media properties and how they can spawn the stars of tomorrow, but this idea never truly crystallized for me until viewing relevant, related seminars over the past two days.

On Wednesday, master director Spike Jonze spoke about his work on everything from short films to television commercials to major motion pictures such as the recent Where the Wild Things Are. He spoke about how he loves to work with brands when they come to him with an idea that excites him. It can be a music video for Bjork or a commercial for the Gap in which he got to destroy a store. Jonze talked about how he often works with agencies to re-imagine the ideas that they bring him—usually tearing up all of the “junk” that got added to the brief or after dozens of client meetings.

His biggest advice for the hundreds of creatives in the room: “The most powerful weapon you have is ‘No.’” Jonze said he took his fair share of bad projects, but he eventually learned that only work that excited him would result in a positive result. It’s a lesson that I believe more brands (personal and corporate) must learn.

Thursday’s highlight for me was the annual Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase. For 90 minutes we saw a series of short films from some of the most talented rising film directors in the world. Examples ranged from the comedic (Drunk History) to delightful (Tone of Every Day) to animated (I Lived on the Moon).

The usual purpose of this 20-year-old event is to expose agencies to talent who might be great at filming their commercials someday. But after seeing dozens of examples of great branded content—rather than a raft of 30-second ads—I came to see the new model falling into place before my eyes. Whether it’s big name directors such as Spike Jonze or up-and-comers such as those in the Saatchi showcase, clients and agencies of all types were looking not for commercial directors, but rather for partners who could help bring ideas to life.

These directors have the stories, the passion, and the ability to capture people’s imagination—but they often lack the resources or opportunities to put their ideas in front of a large audience. Brands have the money and desire to connect with consumers, but most are not in the business of creating entertainment. So putting them together could make magic.

But it’s no longer about hiring a young director to film your commercial. It’s about crafting content and giving up control to the artist. It’s Gatorade filming a replay of a high school football game. It’s Red Bull sponsoring a rising fashion designer. If you get this right, the result just might be Marketing with Meaning.

On Deck for Tomorrow…

I don’t want to give away all of the special things we have planned for our Burning Question seminar Friday at 5:15 p.m. Cannes time (or 11:15 a.m. for those back in the ET). But I will share one secret for readers of this blog. We’re going to be opening up our seminar tomorrow with a live lead-in by a group of “parkours” who we flew over from California. Parkouring or “free running” is a new type of sport in which athletes turn everyday signposts, buildings, and other street-side objects into a jungle gym. We’ve been filming them jumping and leaping all week in Cannes, and they will come from the streets into our seminar tomorrow. Our goal is to shake people up with some entertainment to close out a huge day of seminars and it should be a fun way to start. If you’re reading this in Cannes, you don’t want to miss it. And if you don’t happen to be in the South of France tomorrow we will be sure to capture everything on video at burningquestion.com.

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Cannes Takeaways Day 1 #canneslions

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Well, here we are in the South of France once again for the annual Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. I was last here two years ago for the yearly meeting of the world’s marketing leaders. (You can see some of my previous posts starting here.) Now, it’s one year after the economic crisis that impacted the advertising industry particularly hard. Attendance here at Cannes went down from a high of around 10,000 people to a mere 6,000. But things are looking up! Supposedly attendance is up to 8,000 or more and there is a positive spirit in the air here. Things are also looking up, of course, because we’re here preparing to answer The Burning Question on Friday this week. Preparation for our big event is going very well and I really wish we were on the stage presenting already. But while waiting for our big moment I’ve had the chance to listen and learn from others’ sessions and conversations over drinks. I will blog daily here to share a few things from each day. Read on for my takeaways from yesterday (Monday), the first major day at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

JWT Presents “Ideas People Want to Spend Time With”

Bob Jeffery, CEO, and Fernando Vega Olmos, Creative Chairman, of our sister agency JWT presented some examples of their best work around the world, which represents an entirely new direction for one of the largest and oldest advertising agencies. Jeffery started by making the point that, “Time is the new currency… so we must create ideas that people want to spend time with.” It’s a concept that is perfectly consistent with Marketing with Meaning.

The pair proceeded to share examples of some killer work that is completely consistent with our concept of Marketing with Meaning. Examples included things that you’ve probably seen me tweet about over the past few weeks, including the Heineken classical music concert prank and hilarious videos for Kotex that poke fun of decades of tampon ads. But I was most impressed by two cause-related ideas that the company launched over the past year. First, a campaign for UNICEF in which vending machines were placed with the opportunity for people to donate their change to provide fresh water in Haiti. The campaign created a new way to donate and most users had never donated before. A second campaign for the Red Cross in Mexico created children’s rides (like the ones that used to be outside of supermarkets) in which all donations went to the Red Cross and kids got the chance to “play” hero. The campaign resulted in a +20% increase in donations during the horrible economy last year.

Schematic and Bridge Worldwide Show the Possibilities of a New Meaning Medium

One of our WPP sister digital agencies, Schematic, was back at Cannes with its revolutionary “touchwall” technology. Think of it as a giant iPad on steroids that reads an RFID tag in your conference badge and helps you get more out the event. You can find people, arrange for places to meet, get descriptions of the day’s sessions, and check out nearby restaurants.

This year our agency, Bridge Worldwide, was invited to join the Schematic demo to show how this new “medium” could be used for a variety of brands. We developed two ideas based on brands that we work on. We showed how Charmin could create an entertaining interactive game with mysterious people behind bathroom-stall doors, and we showed a concept for the Bounty brand in which people around the world could collaborate to make a work of art using the device. We’re a long way from having touchwalls installed worldwide, but the unit was a great chance to explore how new technology can become meaningful from the beginning.

Another Question…

One of my favorite things about coming to an event such as this is that you start hearing some common threads of thought as people have time to experience, reflect, and discuss. While we’ve been asking The Burning Question, a new question came to me when I did an interview with the Cannes Eye team here: “Should the word ‘advertising’ be dropped from the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival?” I had not really thought of that before, but the question came up a few hours later over drinks with my friend Rick Boyko, Director of the VCU Brandcenter (which I wrote about previously here). Rick talked about how we should evolve our craft away from “advertising” and all of its negative connotations and move toward something that is more relevant for our present evolution of marketing—around creating experiences and telling stories.

I’m not sure what the answer is yet, but a move away from “advertising” in Cannes and in our industry might be the “reset button” that we all need to elevate our game.

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Takeaways from the Cause Marketing Forum #CMF10

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Last week I had the chance to attend and speak at the annual Cause Marketing Forum in Chicago. Conferences that cover specific topics such as this are a real joy to visit. It’s a chance to peer a little into an “ecosystem” of individuals and companies that are united around a common interest and goal. In this case, it’s a very noble one—cause marketing and corporate social responsibility. I got to speak at a marketers-only dinner during the evening, both introducing Marketing with Meaning as a higher-level paradigm for marketing, and then sharing how Cause and CSR fit in—along with some tips and learnings we’ve seen in this fast-developing space. Instead of rehashing my presentation here I wanted to take this space to share what I learned during the event from some of the biggest marketers in the world. (But do take a look at the video above where I was interviewed at the conference.)

Nike/Livestrong

By now everyone has seen the yellow bracelets and admired the very innovative way that Nike has supported Lance Armstrong and his drive to cure cancer. But few have gotten the inside scoop on how the program came about and the results it has seen. Tom Kelley, brand marketer for Nike, shared some terrific insights. He began by setting up Nike’s mission: “To achieve human potential… and bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” He talked about when one of its prize athletes, Lance Armstrong, contracted cancer it became Nike’s first significant cause marketing effort. As Tom said, “We didn’t choose cancer; cancer chose us.” Nike, a brand that sticks very close to its roots in driving athletic performance, saw Lance fight back in the hospital, on the bike, and in the public eye. And when the brand got into the cause, it did so in a very unique way—by creating the yellow band campaign and raising millions of dollars for research.

Nike has also smartly continued its involvement in Livestrong as Lance, too, continues to ride to challenge himself and raise funds to fight the disease. Kelly spoke about the most recent innovation in the cause, the Nike Chalkbot, which debuted in the Tour de France last year. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this great video:

What’s brilliant about the Chalkbot is that it hits on so many levels. It fits Nike’s drive for innovation and it inspires athletes to perform their best. It also builds off a tradition of this tradition-rich sport. It gives people around the world the chance to participate in a live event. And it’s all for a very good cause. I expect to see Chalkbot win a Cannes Lion when I go there in a few weeks.

The results from this one idea have been incredible: 36,000 cheers were submitted, there were 139 major PR stories, membership of Livestrong’s Facebook page rose 77%, and Nike’s Livestrong line saw the largest month ever for both product sales and donations. This year the Chalkbot will be back on the Tour with a few improvements—including a better eraser.

A final point on Nike: I later heard a presentation on Macy’s cause efforts which are vast and impressive. For its programs, Macy’s executives talked about how they closely look toward the causes that its consumers care about. This seems smart and is clearly what most marketers are trained to do. But this was not at all how Nike approached cancer. It didn’t survey its buyers and ask what they believe in; rather, the brand worked according to what it as a brand cares about. Maybe this is the way we are headed in the future: brands as true personalities (powered by social, of course), which attract fans who aspire to know and be like them. Something to think about…

Pepsi Refresh

Everyone wants to know how the Pepsi Refresh is going—mainly because it represents such a big step in a new direction by a major marketer that has done advertising the traditional way for so long. Bonin Bough, Director of Digital and Social Media at Pepsi, took the stage to update an eager audience. He started by grounding the effort on a bigger change, “Refresh is a small part of a transformation going on across PepsiCo… it’s part of our belief in ‘Performance with Purpose.’” (For more on that, check out my blog post a few weeks ago). The idea behind Refresh came from studying a survey of Pepsi drinkers. Thinking beyond just providing liquid refreshment, the brand uncovered the insight that “Optimism is a catalyst for ideas that change society.” Pepsi chose to embrace and encourage optimism, but not through just a logo change and raft of new TV ads—rather, they had to DO something. The marketing team knew they had to “create a movement, not a moment.” So Super Bowl ads were out, and Pepsi Refresh was in.

Best Buy

Tim Showalter-Loch spoke at an intimate breakout group at the forum with the title of “Teen Cause Marketing.” The room fit about 12 people, but somehow 24 people squeezed in to hear how this leading, growing group of Blue Shirts is tackling teen+cause marketing. Best Buy has begun to edge into cause marketing for a few reasons: First, the company is maturing and needs to better differentiate itself in a crowded marketplace. Second, research shows that the rising generation of young people expects brands to have a higher-level purpose. In fact, their research shows that teens see big companies as authority figures—and this generation expects authority figures to step up and solve problems (a variation on the helicopter parenting that they have experienced).

Tim talked about how the brand discovered a big opportunity to embrace “teens’ positive development.” Teens are obviously important because they purchase a lot of Best Buy products and influence their parents to buy a lot more. In fact, today’s teen is the household Chief Technology Officer. Tim made a great analogy to the first generation of immigrant children who grow up speaking the new language and have to translate to their parents. Technology is that new language now.

The company saw an opportunity to do something in “positive development” because the teen years are a time when little decisions and experiences can have a large impact on the personalities and paths of young people. And teens need something more than the “negative” campaigns against smoking, drinking, drugs, and texting while driving.

Best Buy’s focus here has just begun, but it has done some nice, smart work at a site called @15 where it is encouraging kids to learn and innovate. It already has more than 200,000 members thanks to partners such as DoSomething.org.

Tim talked about how this small start is getting Best Buy’s leaders to think about how they can do more. Perhaps enrolling teens to help design the company’s products and business models. Tim spoke about his evolving belief that “The future is about creating a business that works for social change… don’t just fix your reputation by giving money; do something.” We talked about how Walmart recently closed the gap in Medicare drug prices because of its enormous purchasing power.

Pedigree

John Anton, Marketing Director for Pedigree, spoke about the history of the brand’s embrace of cause marketing around pets. I first wrote about Pedigree well over a year ago here, so I was excited to get more firsthand info on its very successful program. Anton spoke about how Pedigree has a Brand Purpose both around providing high-quality food and a belief that “every dog deserves a loving home.”

Pedigree’s first major efforts in its cause to drive shelter dog adoption came in February 2007 when it aired a commercial twice during the broadcast of the annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show. The ad brought light to the tragedy of unadopted dogs and said that the brand would match donations during the event. This small effort raised more than $1.7 million and showed the brand they were onto something.

Anton provided some great background on the brand’s decision to create its own foundation rather than partnering with other, existing nonprofits in this space. The biggest reason came to light when a national nonprofit that it partnered with supported legislation that was seen as negative to pure-breed owners. Because of its association with the nonprofit, Pedigree received many negative responses and threats to stop buying its food.

So the Pedigree Foundation was set up as its own 501(c)3 organization apart from Mars, the owner of Pedigree. It has its own staff and annual report. Aside from funds from Pedigree marketing, the foundation receives about $1 million per year in donations from individuals. Anton admitted that it was new ground to figure out how to do this, but by creating its own foundation Pedigree is benefiting from added credibility, control, employee pride, and a positive long-term legacy.

Interestingly, this idea of companies setting up their own foundations is fairly controversial, as it creates some competition in the cause market. I’m sure this will continue to be a hot topic in the future.

JetBlue

One small new learning came from a conversation with an executive from JetBlue at dinner. In my presentation I talked about the Marketing with Meaning example of how Hyundai brilliantly grew sales in a down year by introducing the Assurance program—a program so good that brands as diverse as Pfizer and the Toronto Raptors followed with similar programs. She mentioned that JetBlue, too, had offered to fly you free if you lost your job. This program returned immediate results and virtually no tickets were returned.

Many thanks to David Hessekiel and his staff at the Cause Marketing Forum for putting on a great show and inviting me to both teach and learn. It’s clearly a pocket of Marketing with Meaning that is leading the way.

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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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Cause Marketing at the Speed of Need: #IABSM

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

On Monday I had the chance to speak at the IAB’s annual social-media event in New York City. I led a panel that included Adam Fell, VP of Quincy Jones Productions, and Jory Des Jardins, Co-founder and President of BlogHer. The topic of the session was “Social Media, World Events and the New Face of Cause Marketing.” It was a chance to explore some new territory in cause marketing and Marketing with Meaning, and I hope to continue the conversation with you in the weeks and months to come.

Our session came from a discussion I had a few months ago with Lisa Milgram, who runs programming for the IAB. She had taken notice of the number of brands that had jumped in with investments of money, time, and supplies after the earthquake in Haiti, and called me to talk about whether this was a topic we could explore further at the IAB social-media event. After some thinking and discussion, we fleshed out what I think is a fairly new concept in cause marketing, itself a concept that only really began in the 1970s and 1980s. We realized that while most cause-marketing efforts are begun with careful consideration and long-term planning by brands, events such as Haiti were compelling brands to move internal mountains and respond at the “speed of need.” Thus a conference panel topic was born.

My role in the session was to introduce the concept of cause-related marketing, show how it is an example of Marketing with Meaning, and then explore the growing number of brands that are evolving their approach to become much more instinctual and speedy in their cause responses. I spoke about two examples over the past few years: (1) the Tide brand’s response to Hurricane Katrina; and (2) the Haagen-Dazs response to honeybee disease. Both efforts brought meaningful attention and dollars to worthy causes in quick time. And both efforts built the business: Tide achieved its highest copy scores in history for its promotion of Tide Loads of Hope, and Haagen-Dazs saw sales grow 16% through its honeybee campaign and promotional flavor. The slides above show what I covered, and this article in Tuesday’s SmartBrief on Social Media captures the session nicely.

I was happy to turn things over to my fellow panelists after this short thought-starter. Adam Fell came first to tell the story of how he helped pull together many musicians in rapid time for the “We Are the World 25 for Haiti” song. He started by showing the audience camera footage from his trip to the battered country—proving that when marketers actually directly experience the cause they are involved in, much better work results. Adam spoke about how social media amplified the need—and even helped spread the word back to Haiti that millions of people around the world were praying for and contributing to their recovery.

Adam also shared an interesting story about the Visa brand’s participation in the event. Visa had planned for some time to be a sponsor of the 25th anniversary of “We Are the World” when it was planned to be in support of Africa. But when Haiti hit and Quincy Jones and others chose to throw their support behind aid for this country, the Visa brand team was thrown a bit off. But the brand team eventually agreed that the need here was great, and adjusted to stay onboard this effort.

After hearing from Adam I turned things over to Jory Des Jardins to give us some perspective of bloggers—who are marketing savvy, yet anchored in the real consumer world. She talked about how bloggers also reacted quickly to Haiti and gave both money and attention to the issue. But she had a few warnings for the audience as well: First, she reported that bloggers—who I believe are the vanguard of changing consumer opinion—are growing wary of cause-marketing efforts that seem too small or self-serving. Second, she suggested that cause-marketing efforts often need some influencers (such as bloggers) to start the word of mouth behind a new initiative. In other words, just putting up a Facebook page and waiting for traffic won’t cut it.

My only regret about the session was that we didn’t have much time for questions and discussion about this rising trend of “speed of need” cause marketing. I am personally unsure about whether most brands have the core purpose and speedy systems to allow them to give when the gut-level need arises. I would also like to explore more about our consumers’ perspective, and whether “promoting” that your brand has given can actually backfire—after all, who among us tells all of our friends how much we gave to causes in our lives…

What do you think?

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