Ever since I spoke to Erik Hauser last year I've been looking for an opportunity to speak with him again. He's optimistic, he's infectiously enthusiastic, and he has a lot to say on a lot of different topics almost any hour of the day or night (as anyone who follows the Experiential Marketing Forum knows).
Long story short, I asked him if I could interview him for this here podcast, and he amicably agreed. Rather than asking him to define "experiential marketing" for the umpteenth time, I thought instead it would be more illuminating to talk about emotionally connecting with brands, using experiential marketing techniques when searching for a job, and, of course, Gene Simmons. So that's what we did.
I invite you to listen in on our conversation. You can do so by clicking on the Flash device below. You are also welcome to download an mp3 of this interview by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) on this link. Finally, this and other Talent Blog Podcasts are always available on iTunes. Heck, you can even subscribe to our podcast there!
A few highlights of the interview can be found at the following time coordinates:
00:59 - Gene Simmons: The Genius
05:19 - You need a 3rd Party to serve as "Keeper of the Brand"
10:04 - You want to raise demand? Decrease the supply! (From Hydrox to Polaroid)
12:01 - The "outside perspective"
14:45 - The EMF: How moderating discussions increases their value
16:08 - Keys to nurturing a vital online community
20:05 - "Experiential" is a methodology, not a tactic
I'm going to set aside my "career advice" hat for a second and put on my "marketing thought leader" hat so that I can briefly discuss some interesting things I noticed about the Super Bowl ads.
First, GoDaddy. For a few years now, they've been posting the "hot" versions of their notorious ads on their website. While last year the message was "marketing has all the fun," this year, the message seemed to be, "the hot ads are on the web." In fact, the commercial explicitly mocked people for watching the ads on television.
So, Interesting Integration Strategy #1: Create a television ad that is basically an advertisement for the on-line ad (which happens to be on your website).
Second, Under Armour. Apparently, as their Apple-esque ad ended, if you were on their mailing list, you received an HTML email allowing you to pre-order the future of the athletic shoe. The obvious assumption is that even when watching television, people are on-line, either via their cellphone, their Blackberry, or their household PC.
Interesting Integration Strategy #2: Supplement broadcast advertisement with immediate on-line call to action.
The writing is on the FunWall: Marketing is undergoing an unprecedented and overwhelming proliferation of channels. This isn't new news, naturally. It's been going on for a while, what with computers in taxicabs and digital bulletin in elevators and all. But it does seem like every day the web is adding another site, another portal, or another technology that will allow people to connect with each other and, by extension, allow marketers to connect with consumers.
So, in addition to your direct mail campaigns, your advertising (on and off-line), and your promotions, you, Mr and/or Ms. Marketer, need to figure out whether or not you should be blogging, vlogging, Twittering, or podcasting. How can you use Facebook and MySpace? How can you leverage LinkedIn and Plaxo? Where is your sim in Second Life? Your Halo tie-in? Your product placement in Grand Theft Auto? An what about that other cool thing you read or heard about but aren't even sure what it's for?
Everyone feels like they should be doing all or some of the above, but there are so many possibilities, and so much on your plate already, that it's hard to know where to start. To help clear the air and provide some sort of guide to the perplexed, I hunted down a couple of new media-savvy marketers and asked them quite simply: How can marketers best figure out what they should get into and what they can profitably avoid?
The upshot of the ARF et al. study was that advertisements which tell a convincing or engaging story more effectively make a positive impression on viewers than those that focus on positioning a product in terms of its benefits. Max Kalehoff insists that the real lesson here is not about advertising effectiveness but about brand effectiveness. Specifically, he says, brands need compelling foundational narratives that connect with people by distilling and embodying that brand's essence.
I believe that is just what I've been trying to do with this blog but, just in case that has not been entirely and intuitively obvious, please allow me to explain.
David has literally written the book on the "new rules of marketing and PR." I spoke with him about thought leadership strategies, building user personas, and using press releases as a marketing tool. If you have the time, please check out our conversation and let me know what you think.
You can hear the interview by clicking on the device below:
You can download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here, or check out this and other Talent Blog podcasts on iTunes.
Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
2:14 - Defining "thought leadership"
5:40 - Main challenges to crafting a thought leadership strategy
9:00 - Methods for creating "user personas"
10:53 - The Engineer and the "100 Mothers"
11:30 - "Why don't people do things the right way?"
16:19 - Reading blogs written by your buyer personas
18:00 - The "News Release Strategy"
25:30 - "The media will notice"
The other day I had the good fortune of speaking with Paige and Gretchen of MommyCast, a popular podcast devoted to moms the world over and one that has been featured everywhere from Variety and USA Today to the BBC and the Wall Street Journal. I asked them about their editorial perspective, what works and what doesn't when companies approach them with sponsorship offers, and why their podcast has been so wildly successful.
If you haven't listened to their podcast, you should. If you'd like to listen in on our conversation you can use this device:
You can also download this interview by right-clicking (or "control-clicking," Mac-wise) on this link, or access it (along with other Talent Blog Podcast episodes) via iTunes or at Switchpod.
Some points of interest:
2:55 - How moms share information
4:20 - Successful pitch approaches
10:05 - People who don't get podcasting
13:33 - Measuring the impact of a podcast
21:00 - Media kits matter!
There is plenty of stuff out there that you can read about in-game advertising. What's strange is when games become so popular that they can serve as the setting for real-live commercials, like in this one for Toyota Tacoma:
When I first saw this piece, I was wondering if the Dear Leader was going to take offense. I mean, he does have a million-man army and, apparently, nuclear weapons, so I wouldn't want to rub him the wrong way. Then I did a little bit of research about North Korea and found out that "under the wise flawless Songun leadership of Comrade Generalissimo Kim Jong Il all the ills plaguing the outside world dare not touch Juche Korea which is why all the Koreans live lives of complete blissful happiness that never even once suffers any dampening by the single reverse, setback, or fiasco."
Reading those words convinced me that Aquent, at least, had nothing to fear from the country "known around the world as the Land of Joy and Hope of the Utopian Socialist Workers' Paradise." In fact, once I saw this video, I kind of wanted to move there!
A few years back, Aquent began producing videos featuring expert opinions on issues faced by designers and marketers. One of those videos, which we created to coincide with Halloween, was called, "Transformational Marketing," and lovingly parodied a certain vulpine form of executive arrogance.
Because I don't live in New York, and have thus not yet seen the giant two-storied rears smiling down on passers-by from high above Times Square, I had to discover the Washlet via AdCritic Interactive. Of course, after that initial tip, I learned all I needed to know about this "revolution in personal hygiene" from the amazing clean is happy site itself.
I'm not sure what is more impressive about this site: the remarkable technology that allows you to go to the bathroom and have a "hands free" experience; the use of Flash and video (which is undeniably great); or the way ML Rogers turns getting your bum sprayed by a self-sterilizing wand into a quality of life issue.
Given the innuendo and double entendre that drives the fairly self-parodic (one commentator wrote, "If I were to make a parody website this would be it") humor behind the "clean is happy" campaign, it's no surprise that most folks writing about it have a hard time reigning in their inner child. AdAge refers to it as "cheeky," Alissa at mediabistro.com's UnBeige calls it '"assvertising," and John at menuism.com's blog writes demurely about the "pleasant buttocks" which adorn the site and the outdoor advertising. For my part, I still can't watch the site without cackling in infantile glee and then, just as the designers no doubt envisioned, gleefully sharing it with others.
All scatology aside, the site is clever, well-designed and, as far as interactive advertising goes, fairly effective. Flash designers, graphic designers, and marketers in the personal hygiene category could all learn something from it. It might even make you happier.
1. I checked out their "new" website (launched in April) the other day and was struck by the Yugo Nakamura-esque look and feel of it all. (I was trying to find out if he had anything to do with the site, but my email to W+K's PR folk has gone unanswered.) There is some dispute as to whether the site is cool or lame, cutting edge or same-old-same-old, reflective of their interactive capabilities (or lack thereof), etc. I'm not qualified to weigh in on that subject, but I do appreciate that the site demonstrates at least one way for a multidimensional information space, in this case, the world of an agency's work, to be portrayed as an interactive, 2-D space.
2. Russell Davies, who used to work at W+K, but now apparently works for a "global, small business" called, "Open Intelligence Agency," wrote a post almost a year ago, and several months after he had left, entitled, "7 things I learned at wieden and kennedy (portland edition)." A number of blogs linked to the post at the time, but I just read it yesterday. Aside from reminding me that blogs are collections of permanent ephemera, his list of learnings included this old chestnut: The key to creative genius; work harder. How's the old equation go? 1% inspiration/99% perspiration? Having ideas is easy - doing things requires effort.
3. The local W+K offices have blogs dedicated to their work and office hijinks (to provide but one example). They also use the blogs to introduce new folks. In this post introducing a new member of the account management team in London, the newbie is compared to Lisa Stansfield, in part because they both come from the same town and have both traveled around the world, in part because they "both commend themselves to the eye." As much as I admire that turn of phrase, I'm fairly certain that I couldn't get away with referring to a co-worker thusly on this blog. Is it because I used to work in HR? Is it because I work at a staffing agency instead of an ad agency? Or is it just because I work in the United States and not London? Hmmm.
4. I believe that W+K has been a client of ours at one point or another, at least in Portland. (This more in the interest of full disclosure than as a kind of special pleading.)
5. One other thing from the Mr. Davies' "7 Learnings": You can tell from the work if people enjoyed making it. I think you can make a similar statement about customer service; you can tell from the way they treat you if someone enjoys their job. It should also make people consider their resumes, portfolios, blogs, etc.. How much joy do yours emanate?
In response to my last post, commenter Rob weighed in with an interesting question: "Do you think that the evolution of user-produced media (YouTube, Current.tv, etc.) is a positive or negative trend in marketing?" For my part, I don't think of the trend as positive or negative, because the fact is, it's happening. Design, production, and publication tools have been democratized, taken out from behind the wall of professionalism and placed in the hands of the general public. User-generated content is perceived as having integrity, as coming straight from the mind and soul of the consumer. It also has a certain in-your-face charisma-- right now, to express oneself in media that were formerly reserved for professionals feels like rebellion against an elite. It's exciting to see the wall between how products craftily represent themselves and how their target audience actually perceives them knocked down with creativity, wit, and talent.
Think of user-generated media and an identifiable aesthetic comes to mind: low-fi, "reality-style" production values; irreverent, ironic humor; and use of a product in a way the manufacturer didn't intend to make a statement that is in no way tethered to the commercial interests of the product. Just as important as user-generated media is user-transmitted media. It's funny, the hottest word in marketing right now is "viral"- marketers are always trying to figure out how to generate the next piece of commercial media that is going to be picked up and spread like wildfire from one consumer to the next. And yet, while trying to harness it, the trend has also been viewed with some apprehension and even hostility, because it's still an unknown quantity that can't quite be controlled.
It all started when I got a Friend Request through my MySpace account from a woman who said she had known me in graduate school. I didn't recognize her from her picture for one simple reason: when I knew her, she was a man.
Then, my friend Pagan Kennedy published a biography entitled, The First Man-Made Man, about the person who underwent the first female-to-male sex change operation.
Lastly and most recently, a guy I know who publishes a magazine called LEMON, asked if I wanted to write a fairly short piece about the classical composer and electronic music pioneer, Wendy Carlos, who began this life as Walter Carlos.
In the latter case, Wendy had had an established brand as "Walter" - she had produced the first ever platinum classical record, Switched-ON Bach, and composed the music for A Clockwork Orange under that name - and then went through a re-branding exercise that involved a very public disclosure (in Playboy, of all places) of a very private and personal matter.
All's well that ends well, of course. Wendy Carlos is simply Wendy Carlos nowadays, even on her earlier recordings, and what may have seemed scandalous or shocking even in the seventies, is today, well, while still surprising, at least not completely out of the ordinary.
This got me thinking. What brands have gone through "gender-reassignment"? That is, are there well-known brands that started out as "male" or "female" and have now switched? There are certainly brands like Jockey, which was traditionally male (when you think of "Jockey shorts," who do you picture in them?) and now go both ways, but is there a brand that went one way and now goes the other?
I'll admit it. Sometimes I find Seth Godin kind of preachy. Indeed it seems that, for him, marketing is preaching, or "evangelizing," as it's more commonly called in the church of the customer. "It's about spreading ideas that you believe in, sharing ideas you're passionate about... and doing it with authenticity." Or so goes the Gospel of Godin.
He's not alone. Back in November, Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid published an updated Hughtrain Manifesto, which he kicks off with the proclamation that, "The market for something to believe in is infinite." That the act of marketing is not too different from the Acts of the Apostles becomes more clear towards the end of the Manifesto where we read: "A well-executed marketing campaign is an act of love." And if the point weren't fine enough, we are then told, "Choosing to have a 'smarter conversation' with the market is not a marketing decision; it's a moral decision."
I understand the allure of faith to marketers. On the one hand, people want to feel good about themselves and what they are doing and, since marketing often has an air of disrepute about it, defining it in terms of authenticity and honesty bestows upon it the glow of existential righteousness. On the other hand, if we want to be honest with ourselves as marketers, we must concede that we want people to have a pre-rational devotion to our products and services. In other words, faith in our products and services is the holy grail.
Of course, as good marketers, we're just responding to what consumers want. Part of our sense of self-worth as humans comes from seeing our convictions mirrored in the communities and organizations we associate with. Since many of those associations are economic, people increasingly hope to find themselves reflected in the phantasmagoria of the marketplace. Accordingly, as one blogger put it, many long-established brands "are under threat because they don't believe in the stuff we believe in, indeed they often don't believe in anything."
Maybe it's because I was brought up with a God vs. Mammon mindset, but the rhetoric of faith in the mouths of marketers rubs me the wrong way. I guess I'm more comfortable with marketing based on knowledge - I know what this can do; I know what you need; etc. - than one based on faith. This might make me a bad marketer. But does it make me a bad person, too?
Mike Wagner recently posted to his blog a piece on raw marketing. "Raw marketing" involves "a raw, direct, and honest invitation to become someone's customer," while the "cooked" variety makes him feel like "some marketer is trying to yank me around."
I think a lot of job seekers could find a lesson here. When composing a cover letter, assembling a resume, or constructing a portfolio, where are you "cooking" your brand? When you find yourself doing that, pause for a moment and ask yourself, "If I were going to approach this prospective client or employer directly and honestly, what would that sound like?" Then try it.
Of course, you'll have to overcome the idea that honesty and directness are out of place in a job search....
At a recent marketing conference, the catchphrase was "innovation," as in, "We've entered the age of the 'innovation economy,'" or, "Today, innovation is the key to differentiation." Given the premium placed on innovation, a colleague who attended this conference wondered aloud how job seekers could best communicate their ability to innovate.
As a way of answering that question, I'll direct you to a recent post on innovation hype I found on Scott Berkun's blog. Berkun has book on the myth of innovation coming out in May, so you'll have to wait until then to get the whole story, but he states his basic perspective fairly clearly in the aforementioned post: No matter how ubiquitous the invocation of innovation, actual innovations are fairly rare, and, as far as success in business is concerned, rarely necessary.
From the job seeker's standpoint, if the job you are applying for requires that you demonstrate your ability to innovate, the only real way to do that is to point to innovations you have actually brought into being. Keeping Berkun's words in mind, however, be prepared to exercise caution and refrain from portraying drastic improvements or significant changes as something they are not, namely, innovations.
Of course you could also follow Berkun's advice and, when a prospective employer says, "Tell me about a situation where you introduced a real innovation," simply ask, "What do you mean by that?"
I addressed the question, "What is Marketing?" here a while back, and then most recently, here. The latter post inspired this thoughtful response from John Cass and got me thinking even more about the distinction between sales, advertising, and marketing proper.
I'm not sure that I'm any closer to understanding what marketing is in its purest form, but after watching GoDaddy.com's most recent Super Bowl ad, I think I understand why everyone wants to work in marketing.
On second thought, maybe I only have more insight into why working in Human Resources at GoDaddy might be, well, interesting.
Several weeks ago I used this forum to congratulate Gino Bona for successfully pitching the NFL on an ad for the Super Bowl.
If you, like me, did not get to see the game in its entirety and therefore missed Gino's ad, then join me in thanking your lucky stars for the miracle of YouTube, where you can watch it.
I agree with a commenter on my earlier post, who thought it was a shame that Gino's idea of showing fans reacting to a $6000 end-of-season bar tab did not make it into the final cut. Maybe the NFL found it too unrealistic. After all, who associates football with drinking?
The New York Times published an article this morning about the surprising success of the ubiquitous dancing cowboy ads created by Jennifer Uhls for LowerMyBills.com. I bring this to your attention, esteemed reader, because it reminds us that designing banner ads is first and foremost about getting attention and not necessarily about creating something beautiful or sophisticated.
On a more shameless level, I bring this to your attention because the article quotes one James Gardner, who just so happens to work in Aquent's marketing department focusing on, of all things, online marketing. James maintains a website called Adverlicio.us, an online advertising archive. Aside from allowing visitors to rate a wide variety of on-line ads, James' site also boasts a nice collection of LowerMyBills ads.
Ever since I spoke to Erik Hauser last year I've been looking for an opportunity to speak with him again. He's optimistic, he's infectiously enthusiastic, and he has a lot to say on a lot of different topics almost any hour of the day or night (as anyone who follows the Experiential Marketing Forum knows). 
I'm going to set aside my "career advice" hat for a second and put on my "marketing thought leader" hat so that I can briefly discuss some interesting things I noticed about the Super Bowl ads.
