You know how I wrote the other day that "people make the difference" at Aquent? Well, a week later, I still think it's true!
But you know, it's not just me. When we ask Aquent employees what they like best about Aquent, they consistently respond, "The people I work with." Guess what? I would say the same thing. I feel peculiarly fortunate to work with a bunch of people who are smart, funny, and friendly.
For example, take our creative director, Mark Saperstein (that's a picture of him in his incarnation as an undead warlock). Mark is a talented and funny guy who actually proposed to his wife via a job posting on our website (she accepted). He's passionate about zombies, cannibals, and Conan the Barbarian. He's also an articulate, detailed, and sometimes harsh, I mean, "frank," critic of creative work.
Aside from frequently asking me to be less boring, blogwise, he's overseen some of our endlessly clever direct mail and marketing pieces like the ever-popular "furry" card, the infamous "valium" card, the mirror card, the cow, the beach ball, and the Kim Jong Il: "I Ate the Big Slab at Aaron's House O' Ribs" card.
Mark's sense of humor has sometimes been too "out" for corporate consumption -- like when he wanted to advertise our interactive staffing capabilities with a pixelated rendering of a hand making an obscene gesture -- but it's never been too "out" for me, and, gosh darn it, I love that MMORPG-playin', kimchee-eatin', plaid-shirt-wearin', anime-watchin', erstwhile-astronomy-lovin', "what art school did you go to?"-askin' guy.
If you talk to marketers who have run customer loyalty programs, they can pretty quickly tell you the basic keys to program success. I've set them out as best I can here, though I recommend reading the last key first.
If you think I'm right on target, or way off base, please leave a comment.
In order for the program to be meaningful and attract participation, you need to offer participants things they want. To find out what those things are, you have to ask them. Then, when the program is up and running, you've got to continually ask them if they are really getting what they want. Were they happy with the item they received? Was the customer service up to snuff? Were their expectations met? Is there anything else they'd like to see in the program? And so on.
The listening should never stop. You've got to keep checking in with them to update and expand your offerings to meet their changing needs and wishes.
2. Act on What the Customer Tells You
If you're going to go to the trouble of asking what customers want, and they are going to take the time to respond, then you've got to deliver. If they want pet supplies, offer pet supplies. If they want home and garden accessories, offer home and garden accessories. If they want it, and you can get it for them, do it.
More importantly, if there are problems with fulfillment, customer service, or the account management process, you've got to fix them. The program is supposed to be a benefit to your customers. If it turns out to be a hassle or a disappointment, it will fail.
The fellow who made this, Chuck Lewis, is also known as "The Poetic Prophet," and, more to the point, "The SEO Rapper." In addition to dropping science on the importance of design and coding - "please don't use tables even though they work fine/ when it come to indexing they give searches a hard time/ make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide/ remove font type, font color and font size" - he kicks serious k-nowledge on conversion, social media, and paid search. Check it out, boyeeeez! (I almost can't believe I just wrote that.)
Long story short, if your page rank is illin' and your SEM isn't "fillin'" it, go on and pick up on what the SEO Rapper is puttin' down. He'll school y'all. Peace. Out.
Special "shout out" to Shelli and Mariam in Aquent's Detroit office for turning me on to this dude.
I always get in trouble when I start a post this way, but I'm a slow learner...
The other day I was talking to a friend who happens to be in marketing. When I first knew him some seventeen years ago, we were in a band together and he was one of the two guys who had a real job (I was not the other one). Back then he was doing market research, I believe, for a computer manufacturer and has spent most of his subsequent career in the tech sector working for some well-known brands as well as some fairly niche ones.
The only reason I bring this up is that he just started a new job. I wasn't too surprised because he always seems to be starting a new job and I said as much. "I don't look for them," he exclaimed, "they find me!" Then he laughed and said, "Well, I have had 7 jobs since 1999."
Talking to my wife about this later, she said, "That's going to look bad on his resume." I told her I didn't think so for a couple reasons. First of all, he keeps getting hired, so his employers apparently don't care. Second of all, I don't think they should care. Why? Because of something else he said: "I think of jobs as projects."
When you are looking for a job, the focus should be on what you accomplished and what resulted. Seeing your accomplishments as projects is a great way to communicate exactly that. Whether you worked somewhere for one year or ten doesn't matter. Almost any job, especially in the worlds of design and marketing, can be described as a single project or a series of projects. The cool thing is that doing so allows you to package your experience in discrete, easily digestible chunks of real-world value and revenue-generating impact.
Now, dish up a heaping platter of these tasty morsels and tell your next employer it's suppertime! Bon appetit!
Todd's knowledge of the digital media realm runs deep and, having worked with clients ranging from Microsoft and 3M to Starbucks and the Whole Earth Catalog, his experience is broad.
As far as content development and asset management is concerned, his message is this: "For many individuals and companies, their content (pictures, text, video, etc) is a mess, a liability, and a cost center. It takes focus and effort to turn the content from a liability into an economic asset, but the path is straight-forward and very achievable."
To find out just how straight-forward and achievable, tune in on the 27th. To register, just go here.
In Part 1 of our podcast interview with James Intriligator, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Wales in Bangor, we talked about branding, loyalty, and consumer psychology.
In Part 2, we discuss personae and customer motivation, different neuormarketing approaches, and how understanding the brain can help us make more effective commercials (among other things, of course).
Listen in on our conversation 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. You can also check out this and other Talent Blog Podcasts 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:
01:50 - How to Get the Most out of Focus Groups
03:52 - Aunt Sally and the Straw Man
05:03 - Customer Motivation: Dreams and Aspirations (not just Fears, Uncertainties, and Doubts)
09:59 - Marketing and Branding from a Strategic, Artistic Perspective
11:55 - "There are a lot of good things you can do with marketing"
13:39 - Defining "Neuromarketing"
15:16 - Pros and Cons of Different Neuromarketing Approaches
17:15 - "If someone wants to pursue marketing from a neuromarketing perspective..."
20:44 - The Classic Mistake that Most Ads Make
21:58 - Another Classic Mistake
24:16 - Segment the Emotional and Attentional Aspects of Your Campaigns
She said it, at least in part, ironically. "Marketing? A science? Come on! What's next? Fishing?"
Marketing may not yet be a hard, or even soft, science. Nevertheless, scientists are indeed taking a hard look at marketing and beginning to paint a very interesting picture of how and why marketing actually works IN THE BRAIN.
James Intriligator is one such scientist. Having received his doctorate in psychology from Harvard for work on "attention," James did a stint as a consultant to the automotive industry, among others, before assuming a post in the Center for Neuroscience and Consumer Psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor.
I've known James for many years and decided to call him up when I wanted to get a handle this "neuromarketing" thing. He was kind enough to walk me through this emerging field as well as his own findings regarding brand loyalty (Hint: It kind of makes you act like a crazy person!), segmentation, and literally getting inside the customer's brain.
I invite you to listen in on our conversation. I think you'll find the discussion illuminating and, at times, even entertaining. (Where else will you hear people talk about "brand build-up," "brand flossing," and "brandectomies"?) I had a lot of questions for James and he had a lot of answers. For this reason, I've split the interview into two parts.
You can check out Part 1 right here 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, or check out this and all other Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
A few highlights of the interview can be found at the following time coordinates:
02:35 - How Brands Build Up in Brains
04:06 - Ways to Quantify Brand Loyalty
05:06 - Brand Loyalty, Brand Familiarity, and the Attentional Blink
06:45 - Dealing with Excess Brand Build-Up
08:13 - How to Forge a Robust Representation of the Brand (in the Brain)
10:27 - What Counts as an "Experience" in "Experiential Marketing"?
11:40 - Problems with Product Placement
13:23 - Brand Loyalty and Brain Damage
17:43 - A Brand Is the Net Sum of All Experiences You've Had with a Product/Company
19:22 - The Web as a Branding Medium
23:09 - Segmenting the Brand
26:09 - The One Rule that Fits All Branding and Marketing Activity
The webcast will provide those who are new to the reputation management game with a comprehensive overview of it. For those already involved in search engine optimization and marketing, social media marketing, or the management of an organization's complex and constantly evolving web presence, Andy has a lot of practical, tactical, and technical advice that will help you make sure you're covering all the angles.
Finally, although the emphasis will fall on things that companies can do, should do, or are doing to manage and influence their online reputation, many of the insights Andy will share can be applied by individuals concerned with building and shaping their own online reputations.
In other words, there's something for everybody here so you owe to yourself to check it out. I mean, your reputation is on the line! Doesn't that matter to you? Don't you want to know that you're doing everything in your power to maintain it in the best and strongest light? Wouldn't you feel bad if your reputation was dealt a horrible blow and you could have prevented or avoided it if you had just attended this webcast?
Don't find out the hard way just how important your online reputation can be; find out the easy way how to protect and nurture it: Listen to the darn webcast.
The other day I came across a query on ProfNet from a journalist who was writing an article on how one should manage one's time after losing one's job. Specifically, she wanted to know if people should take time off, immediately start looking for a new job, or possibly get a temp job just to pay the bills.
I sent her my thoughts on the subject which boiled down to, "It all depends." That is, it all depends on whether or not losing your job is a "worst-case scenario," an overcomeable inconvenience, or a blessed relief. In the latter case, unemployment might give you some time to relax, reflect, and enjoy a life of leisure. In the intermediate case, you may need to get your resume in order and call around to see what's cooking, but you aren't really in a state of panic. In the first case, you've got a problem.
But what exactly is the nature of that problem? As fate would have it, I've been thinking a lot about worst-case scenarios lately thanks to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled By Randomness. As far as I can make out, what distinguishes the worst-case scenario from your run-of-the-mill unpleasant situation is the fact that is, ideally, improbably rare, but for all that, overwhelmingly devastating. Its devastating character makes it a rather severe problem, but its rarity makes it all too easy to overlook, ignore, or otherwise pretend it won't happen to you. Which in a way is my point. What will tend to make unemployment a worst-case scenario is the false belief that it will never happen to you.
While I like the fact that she cautions against becoming a "report monkey" - hence her advice to leave the robot work, like automated report generation, to the robots - and recommends that you be prepared to discuss what you do in concise terms, she really got me thinking about the unique pressure experienced by web analytic folk given that, as she points out, they "sit between the techies and the marketers."
June says you should, "make friends on both sides of the fence." The obvious implication is that there are significant differences between the marketers and the techies, the former focused on consumers, products, and revenue, the latter focused on systems, functions, and users; the former tending to be qualitative, the latter quantitative, etc. While some of these differences are undeniably "real," I think It's fortuitous that June uses the metaphor of a "fence," as opposed to a "wall" or a "chasm," because I believe that whatever divides marketers and techies has become increasingly porous and ultimately temporary (like a hastily erected chain-line fence around a construction site).
The other night I was talking to a friend of mine, Peter Dixon, about his cool new cd, "Shady Planet." It hasn't been selling as well as he had hoped, so I, as Mr. New World of Marketing, was suggesting some things he could do to promote it.
For example, I mentioned starting a blog or, better yet, a video blog, in which he talked about music (he knows a lot about music of all flavors), songwriting (he's a melody machine), the making of this cd, and other projects he's been involved with (one of his former bands, Combustible Edison, recorded for SubPop).
Since writing a blog can be sort of time-consuming, I said he could simply start by hunting down music blogs that talked about his old band, or even his new cd, and leave a comment, start a conversation, whatever. As I put it, bloggers are always looking for content and, in a way, he is content.
My basic message was that you don't need a big record label or a press agent to make this stuff happen; you could do it yourself. But before he acted on any of my brilliant ideas, I told him, he needed to decide what he wanted. For example, if he wanted to sell cd's, how many did he want to sell? His exact course of action will naturally depend on whether he wants to sell 500 or 5,000. I thought he should also create a profile of the type of person who he imagines would buy this cd and start thinking about where these people might hang out (both on-line and off-line). Etc. In my view, the more specific he can get about his actual goals, the easier it should be for him to devise and execute a plan that gets him where he wants to go.
In this case, as in many others, however, the big question is: Where SPECIFICALLY do you want to go?
Gary Katz is the CEO and founder of Marketing Operations Partners. Gary is a thought leader in the emerging field of marketing operations, a field to which he brings both a keen intellect and a missionary zeal.
I caught up with Gary and recorded this interview with him, which I present for your podcasting enjoyment. In it, he defines "marketing operations," discusses the benefits of this approach as well as the challenges - both organizational and, for lack of a better word, psychological - faced by anyone trying to implement it within their company. Listen to what he's got to say and find out why he refers to marketing operations as a "cosmic universal force."
To get down to the nitty gritty, you can hear the podcast by clicking on the device pictured below:
You can also download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here, or check out all the Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
00:46 - What is Marketing Operations?
02:12 - What problems should the Marketing Operations approach fix?
05:00 - Marketing vs. Sales: Who's driving?
07:10 - "Sophistication"
10:31 - Ideal metrics
11:25 - Challenges faced by organizations when implementing Marketing Operations
16:30 - MO - A Cosmic, Universal Force
18:37 - Overcoming the challenges
21:40 - Getting C-level support
26:10 - MO: The future of marketing?
29:49 - The missionary sell
Greetings, loyal followers and coincidental visitors of Aquent's Talent Blog!
I know I only did one post last week and I extend my heartfelt and sincere apologies for my shortcomings and unworthiness. I'm back in the saddle this week, though, and vow to return to my 3+ posts pace. Wish me luck!
In any event, I blame my other marketing duties for my blog-wise slackness . We've been pursuing a kind of "thought-leadership" strategy for the past year and I've kind of become "chief thought leader" (what else would a Minister of Enlightenment be?).
In addition to this blog and the Talent Blog Podcast, not to mention the numerous webcasts we sponsor, host, and produce, I edit several newsletters that we send out to clients and talent. Getting all the details wrapped up on those can eat up time faster than a dog eats homework. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the newsletters ate my blog-work.
The talent newsletter primarily features "hot jobs" and career advice while the client newsletter generally focuses on some particular aspect of marketing and includes interviews and insights from our talent and any relevant experts we can track down. I think the content in the client newsletter tends to be pretty strong - judge for yourself by checking out this article on expanding your brand's global footprint, or this one on building branded entertainment sites - though the newsletter has been "under-performing," in terms of people actually clicking on the links to the articles. I've got some ideas about improving things and will try them out over the next few months.
I know I said in my last post that I was going to talk more about Aquent and give the folks who are Aquent more of a voice here. Believe me, I will. But it's sort of late in the day and I want to get another post up, so I thought I would talk about something else: Hate.
"Hate" might be a strong word in this context, but I've been getting some funny reactions from folks, friends of mine, actually, when I tell them that I am "in marketing." For instance, I ran into an old buddy this morning on the "T" and, in the course of talking told him that I worked in marketing. "You don't look it," he quipped.
That's sort of a benign comment, even a kind of backhanded compliment, I suppose, and I probably wouldn't have noted it if it hadn't echoed similar sentiments I've recently encountered. To be specific, last Wednesday, talking with friends over drinks I mentioned my role as a a marketer and my friends said, "We won't tell anybody." Again, fairly low-level, but a kind of a dis, nonetheless, and one I was particularly sensitive to because only a few hours prior to that, when told that I was a marketer, another friend had said, "Well, at least it seems like you still have a soul."
You launch a new product and it doesn't perform as you hoped. What do you do? Well, you could turn to someone like Irma Salinas for answers.
Irma is represented by Aquent's Connecticut office and is currently working on the "Marketing Insights" Team at a large non-alcoholic beverages company (as it turns out, she actually started her career at an international spirits company importing beer from Latin America). She got involved in doing product reviews when working for a research company where she was very involved in reviewing and reporting on the performance of non-carbonated beverages (water, teas, juices, etc.). "I started working in this area when it was really getting competitive. It was a very exciting time. The market for beverages was changing and I learned a lot."
Irma was frequently involved in reviewing the performance of new products. I asked her both why new products don't perform well, but also how companies go about setting sales goals for new products in the first place. "Of course, there is a very extensive process that large companies go through to develop and launch new products," Irma assures me, "and since they have tested it with consumers, etc., you soon discover that the reasons for poor performance are not usually to be found in the product itself."
As part of the follow-up to webcast Aquent sponsored devoted to Seven Key Insights for Global Marketing and Brand Management, I called up Sarah Schuh who is general manager of Aquent's Multilingual Communications offering. Sarah has been working in the marketing translation and localization space for many years now and I thought she could help some of you out there with her experience and insights.
I recorded a podcast with Sarah and in our conversation she made one thing perfectly clear: when it comes to localization, translating copy from one language to the next is actually the easy part. Indeed, the real work happens well before any copy is handed over to the translators. That work involves clarification of your core marketing message, ensuring that this message meaningfully addresses a real audience in the target market, and planning for eventual localization when designing critical marketing instruments such as websites. There's nothing worse than having to add to the cost of translation the cost of redesigning your site to accommodate the expanded text produced by moving from English to, say, German.
To get down to the nitty gritty, you can hear the podcast by clicking on the device pictured below:
You can also download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here, or check out all the Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
01:08 - Does your target audience even exist in another market?
03:18 - It's not just words: How do your visual elements translate?
05:20 - Take localization into account when creating the original message
07:20 - Define the use of company terminology
10:00 - Plan for expansion of foreign text
12:08 - The investment in planning vs. The cost of getting it wrong
13:33 - What companies should look for in their localization partner
17:35 - The cause of localization disasters
20:39 - Is "success" just the absence of "disaster"?
Obsessed as I am with the reach of this blog, I wanted to find out if my last post about absinthe had gotten me any Google-love. Turns out the interweb contains a boatload of absinthe-related content, so Ye Olde Talente Blogge wasn't showing up in the first several pages. I switched tactics and did a search for "Marketing & Hallucination." My post shows up first! I sent myself flowers immediately.
Although the likelihood of anyone doing a search for those two terms may be small, it did return 266,000 results. One concerned an anti-fungal drug that had the side effect of causing people to see Wookies. As strange and intriguing as that was, I was more impressed by a site called Logo.Hallucination. (That link goes to the Logo.Hallucination "concept" page, if for no other reason than that the homepage contains some, er, "adult" imagery.)
The brainchild of one Christophe Bruno, Logo.Hallucination relies on neural network image recognition technology to scan images on the web, detect whether or not an image contains a facsimile of a copyrighted logo, and then sends a letter to the owner of the image encouraging them to contact the company concerned. The most amusing part of the "prank" is that the letter suggests that the company should pay the image owner for advertising and promoting the company's brand.
(Note: I had to repost this entry without the Odeo player due to a technical glitch. If I can fix it I will. - Matt)
William Lunderman is VP of Global Strategic Brand Design at Colgate-Palmolive. He's thus far led quite an illustrious career as a designer and design leader for well-known brands like Revlon and iconic brands like Campbell's Soup. I invite you to listen to our conversation. I went into it assuming, somewhat naively, I admit, that globalization was all about localization and tailoring your products and messages to the world's varied environs. While that is certainly part of multi-national marketing execution, this sort of endless variation is not the essence of global brand strategy.
From a strategic standpoint, as I learned, the key is, on the contrary, honing in on the universal need addressed by your brand's promise. The trick then becomes effectively translating that promise into a culturally relevant consumer language. At least that's how I understood the sage words of Mr. William Lunderman when we spoke.
If you would like to hear what I heard, you can download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here (of course, if you just click on that link, it will play the file for you), or check out all the Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
00:50 - What is "Global Strategic Brand Design?" 04:32 - The Emotional Aspect of the Brand 07:41 - Thinking about Consumers on a Universal Level 09:55 - "Children like to play in their food" 10:41 - AXE - as a Brand 12:16 - Kellogg's and "Owning the Morning" 15:13 - Package as "Delivery Mechanism" of Brand Design 17:08 - The Current Consumer Language 19:55 - The Consumer's Perception of "The Best" 24:23 - Brands at Home and Home Brands 28:09 - Why We Move to New Brands 30:22 - Design Careers: When You Move to the Next Level 32:59 - "Obsolete yourself" - On Evolving and Avoiding Extinction
Jim Sterne, the producer of the eMetrics Summit and the president of the Web Analytics Association, has been talking about the internet and marketing since 1993. Indeed, he was kind enough to talk to me about it just the other day as part of the Talent Blog Podcast. We discussed highlights from the various eMetrics Summits in 2007, how the conference is evolving, and what folks can expect from the summits in 2008. We also talked about changes in the field of web analytics since he and Matt Cutler issued their landmark 2000 white paper, "E-Metrics - Business Metrics for the New Economy."
You may listen to our conversation by clicking on the device below:
You can also download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here, or check out all the Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
00:45 - 2007 eMetrics Summit Overview
02:50 - Summit Content for 2008: More Mainstream Marketing
04:29 - The Buzz around "Engagement"
06:40 - The Slow Growth of "Standards"
09:29 - Website "Slipperiness"
12:20 - Measuring the Success of the Website Overall
16:39 - The People Component of eMetrics
20:18 - Your Website is Your End of the Conversation: Are You Listening?
23:20 - "Website" Is a Verb
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.
Figuratively speaking, our planet is smaller than it used to be, thanks to jet travel, the Internet and other inventions that reduce the historical limitations of distance and time. But when it comes to global product launches and marketing campaigns, it's a big world after all--and going global involves serious challenges as well as significant opportunities.
Cindy Dyer understands that reality all too well. Dyer, who is currently in an Aquent placement as senior manager of consumer strategy and insight at Frito-Lay Inc. in Dallas, started out as a food scientist, but moved into marketing while at Pizza Hut Inc. She's also worked for global giants like General Mills Inc., Campbell's Soup Co. and Mead Johnson & Co., the infant-child nutrition division of Bristol-Myers Squibb. Throughout her career, she's been involved in international branding and marketing campaigns.
Following are a few of Dyer's tips for successfully taking your products and messages beyond your own borders:
Mr. DePalma has written extensively about the challenges associated with taking a brand or a business global, including this article on global toe dippers and toe stubbers, and characterizes the web-based, global marketplace as an "eighth continent," with all the peril and promise that that image implies.
If your company has already gone global, and your toes hurt, or if you're thinking of wading into the global waters and want to know how cold they are, you should tune in on November 29th.
I came across two things yesterday that reminded me how much people don't want to be sold to and how even biology helps us resist the impulses that marketers, advertisers, and sales-folk wish to unleash within us.
First, on my "iGoogle," I'm pushed a "How to of the Day" from wikiHow.com. Yesterday, one of the featured "How to's" was this: "How to Resist a Sales Pitch." The recommendations are wise and vary from "Buy Nothing" to "Know Sales Tactics," though the most interesting one to me was, "Avoid getting the sales pitch in the first place."
Now I realize that there is a difference between sales and marketing, but this is a strong reminder that people want to actively avoid your "messaging," one way or the other.
Secondly, thanks to the Experiential Marketing Forum, I received this article on neuro-marketing which highlights what they call a "Don't Buy" button in the brain. Turns out that, since avoiding sales pitches altogether is not always possible, nature has taken care of us by fitting out our brains with a mechanism in the dorsal fronto-medial cortex that puts the brakes on impulsive behavior. The scientists involved say that, while it might not be proof of "free will," it is proof of "free won't."
Lesson 1: Advertising and "impulse-inducing marketing," my phrase for "sales pitches," are viewed by the general public with suspicion and provoke conscious avoidance behaviors. Moreover, these sorts of tactics run smack up against hard-wired impulse controllers in the brain.
Lesson 2: There's got to be a way for us to influence and manipulate people to behave according to our wishes that they don't instinctively avoid. Any ideas?
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!
I was checking out the buzz log over at Yahoo! and came across this ominously titled post, "The Webkinz Will Rise," about the collectible and cuddly phenomenon known as Webkinz. Apparently, "Webkinz" ranks in the top 100 searches on Yahoo! and buzz about the Webkinz.com site has increased tenfold over the last 12 months.
For those of you who don't know, Webkinz are stuffed animals, kind of like Beanie Babies, only bigger, and each one comes with a special code that you can use to visit your new "pet" on-line, buy stuff for it, dress it up, etc.
I refer to Webkinz and their world as "advertainment" because, well, that's what it is! The Webkinz animal gives you access to the Webkinz world, which is a multi-faceted, immersive commercial for Webkinz. In this way, it resembles the Pokemon revolution of 1995, when Nintendo created a video game that became a card game, a comic, a cartoon, a vast collectible menagerie, and a huge merchandising franchise. In a Leibnizian twist, every part of the Pokemon universe became an advertisement for every other part of it.
In this episode, I speak with Jim Hauptman, Creative Director and Managing Editor at LL Bean. Jim addresses the complexities of "multi-channel" marketing, an approach that seeks to leverage the specific advantages of diverse channels, as opposed to "multiple channel" marketing, which tends to push the same message or content through many channels. He also reveals how winter camping off-sites can lead to great marketing insights.
A few months back I created and posted a podcast here on producing successful creative briefs. Now I've returned to the podcasting arena with another podcast on the tensions between Marketing and Finance.
As you can hear for yourself, I initiated the conversation by asking if there is in actual fact a tension between marketing and finance. Mark Anderson, CFO of Granite City Electric Supply Company, responded, "If you define 'tension,' as 'people coming after each other with hatchets,' then yes, there is tension."
While there was no actual bloodshed during the conversation, it became clear that the tension is very real, has several causes, and is somewhat entrenched. The good news is, the tension can be resolved and the two functions can work together productively.
The basic message of this podcast, which echoes the work of MarketingNPV's Pat LaPointe, is that Marketing and Finance are best served when they collaborate to create a common set of metrics and a shared understanding of their respective goals and cultures.
To hear how our panelists articulated this message you can do one of two things.
The other day, my friend's step-father received a direct mail piece from his local hospital. It informed him that one of the unfortunate by-products of aging was erectile dysfunction (formerly known as "impotence"). This shouldn't be news to anyone who watches television or receives e-mail spam, but it was disturbing to my friend's mother since, as fate would have it, the step-father had been dead for several months.
Mack Collier, among others, has often stressed that every part of marketing is about customer experience. The above example illustrates how this even applies to something as bureaucratic and tedious as list management. It's bad enough that you may be irritating someone with unwanted junk mail, but what if you are actually reminding someone of a painful personal experience? When you are in the business of caring for people and easing their pain, like a hospital, shouldn't avoiding this scenario be of paramount importance?
"Everything in marketing is measurable," Pat LaPointe of MarketingNPV states in an article entitled, "Building Blocks," which recently appeared in Marketing Management magazine. [You can download the article from the MarketingNPV wewbsite following free registration.]
The article focuses on the 10 things that your chief financial officer should know about "measuring the financial return form marketing investments," a subject that will also serve as the topic of a webcast Pat will be conducting on August 21 called, Is Your Marketing an Expense...or an Investment?. Anyone who has ever struggled to convince the folks in finance, or other business leaders for that matter, of the value of a particular marketing expenditure should tune in.
Ironically, the term "value" is often the trickiest sticking point in discussions between marketing and finance.
Please take a second and visit Aquent.com. I'll wait.
Thanks for coming back! Now, based on the homepage, what is it you think we do? Specifically, is it clear that we place so-called, "creatives" - designers, print production artists, writers, etc.?
Granted, the title of the homepage does read, "Aquent :: Search for Marketing and Creative Jobs" (though aside from search engines?), I'm not sure who looks at those - I know I don't), but most of the body copy focuses on marketing. "Aquent helps top marketing organizations and talented marketing professionals achieve their full potential" is dead center, layout-wise, and is typographically offset by the phrase "staffing for marketing organizations" beneath it. Even the business scenario depicted, while possibly evoking a futuristic ad agency, reinforces the "marketing" slant of the site. I mean, there is definitely a guy wearing a suit in that picture. Need I say more?
In typical blogging-daisy-chain fashion, I found out via whosucks.com that the folks at Coming Anarchy had posted this new logo for the Japanese Ministry of Defence. Aside from the strange Web 2.0 look and the utter lack of any predatory animals clutching weapons, as can be found in the many logos displayed on the aforementioned sites, I was struck by the fact that the logo was chosen from among 767 designs submitted as part of a design competition.
Certainly, asking designers to compete for business is not new -- it effectively occurs whenever you send a job or even an RFP out to several studios or agencies -- but the process is certainly becoming more organized and even commoditized. Consider, as a for instance, the contests listed on sitepoint.com.
Is this a step forward or a step backwards? I say both. The copy on the site says, "Need something designed? Don't Outsource it. Crowdsource it!" Sitepoint then allows you to solicit designs from folks around the world -- the web is "worldwide," after all - and you only pay for the one you choose. Sounds simple enough and a clever way of using the connective properties of the web. But isn't it also asking people to work "on spec," a practice actively discouraged by groups like the AIGA?
As I understand the AIGA's position, spec work devalues the graphic design profession and makes designers vulnerable to rip-offs. If I understand sitepoint's concept, their service allows designers everywhere access to jobs for which they would otherwise never be considered.
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!
It seems like only yesterday I was making a snide comment about future Live Earth-esque concerts taking place on-line to reduce their notorious carbon footprints.
As it turns out, the folks at Zwinky were at least one step ahead of the Minister of Enlightenment. They hosted their own 24-hour concert event in Zwinktopia on Stage Z to coincide with the "live" Live Earth. This concert featured such diverse acts as R&B chanteuse, Kelly Rowland, and Scott Ian of the seminal thrash outfit, Anthrax. I have little doubt that it rocked you (meaning "one") like a (virtual) hurricane.
I strongly believe that anything I think or make fun of has already been thought or made fun of on the web.
Aquent recently held a large training event for out staff here in Boston (well, technically, Cambridge). In one session two product managers whom we represent talked about their accomplishments, what they are looking for in a job, and what sorts of trends they are seeing in the field of product management. Among other things, they claimed that companies are looking for "big growth from new products," and that, "New product experts can write their own ticket."
Since being able to write your own ticket is good, I was curious about resources available to folks wishing to move their career into the area of new product development, called "NPD" by those in-the-know. I came across an interesting thing or two.
First, i discovered that the AMA has a few articles on NPD best practices. Then I found out that there is actually an association, the PDMA, or Product Development and Management Association, devoted to improving "the effectiveness of individuals and organizations in product development and management." If you want to learn more about the NPD crowd, this site would not be a bad place to start, if for no other reason than the fact that it features an intriguing glossary of product development related terms such as "accidental discovery," "chunks" (sometimes called "modules" or "major subassemblies"), and "tornado," which I'm told is, "A mid to late growth stage strategy that follows the 'bowling alley' and which describes an often frenzied period of rapid growth and acceptance for a product category."
Finally, I recalled one of the product managers present pointing out that companies are not just interested in "line extensions." They are looking instead for products that "create whole new spaces like the iPod." I was a little disturbed to hear this since Marc Andreessen, who founded a little company called Netscape, recently wrote that "there is no such thing as a 'space'." Aside from the fact that this must lead to a lot of trouble when Mr. Andreessen enters a parking lot, it made me wonder, "Are companies asking for new product developers to do the impossible?"
My friend, Alex, is a product manager represented by Aquent's Boston office. He was a product manager in the biotech world for the last 9 years and when I spoke with him about the evolution of his career the other day, I learned a thing or three about managing products on the cutting edge. Here they are:
1. "Customer Support " knows more about the product than you do.
Alex is a scientist by training and was doing "bench work" at a company that made thermocyclers when it became clear that they needed someone to take over their customer support team. By dealing with customers and their challenges day-in and day-out, Alex got to know the the company's main product top to bottom and found himself serving as the main liaison between the end-users and the engineers crafting the next iteration of the product. In fact, it was via his time in customer support that Alex became a product manager. Who says you need an MBA?
2. Cutting-edge products need a lot of support.
When you are bringing products to market that are "first generation," you quite often haven't worked out all of the kinks (particularly if you are following the "ship and fix" model of product release). You need to have a strong support team in place to handle the inevitable calls from your customers who can't get the machines to do what they need for a variety of reasons - ignorance, manufacturing defect, design flaw, etc. As mentioned above, the efforts of the support team can play a pivotal role in the product development cycle.
3. The "Cutting-Edge" is a moving target and sometimes you fall off.
Sometimes you're developing a product based on current best practices and standards, and then a competitor introduces a new process (which may or may not count as a "disruptive technology," though some contend that such technologies are mythical) that effectively makes your product obsolete. Depending on how much money you've sunk into the product, the sales effort, the support infrastructure, etc., you may still bring it out and hope for the best. Still, the fact of the matter is that a "trailing edge" product is living on borrowed time.
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Of course, if you have a successful product, then chances are you will get acquired at some point and, as Alex learned, managing one or two products for a small-ish company is different from managing a lot of them for a large-ish one. There are also complications that arise from working with a sales force in a company where there are competing product lines or categories. Etc., etc.
In other words, I learned a bunch of other stuff from Alex but, since this is "just a blog," I'm going to stop sharing at this point. If you want to know more, contact me and I'd be happy to put you in touch with him!
You know how I wrote the other day that "people make the difference" at Aquent? Well, a week later, I still think it's true! 
