If You Could Create A New Brand From Scratch…

Posted on May 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

What would it look like?

Here are some characteristics that make sense to me.

  1. Environmental – not a ‘green’ brand but sustainable by design. 
  2. Opinionated – not the kind of brand that sits on the fence but a brand with an opinion and point of view. Think Oreo on marriage equality in the US.
  3. Personality – related to the above points. A clear and real brand personality. Not the grey, we want to please everyone brand that is commonplace today. A brand that could speak its mind and even be a bit aggressive or grumpy at times.
  4. Equitable Business Model – lots of opportunity here:
    1. Not a CSR program but contributing to causes by design. Philanthropy or charity baked into the business plan. 
    2. Transparent pricing and profit margins. A business that works to achieve a specific profit margin and no more. The budget would be publicly available. Additional profit would be channelled into philanthropy or causes when the profit threshold was achieved.
    3. Pricing – price goes down as economies of scale go up. No gouging customers.
    4. Contributory – product is manufactured in markets where it is sold. Rejection of global levers on the basis that its not best for customers.
  5. Transparency – relating to the above points. Financials published on the open web in real-time all the time.
  6. Community – a clear customer profile. The brand would facilitate a community within its customer base.
  7. Service – no expense spared in providing customer service based on the insight the best business strategy is the one that looks after customers the best.
  8. Content – brand as media company. Building on the Red Bull model – a value exchange that is related but separate to the product.
  9. Values – clear values that drive all business decision making, not opportunistic values based operations i.e. we believe this until it no longer suits us.

So there you go. Something to think about. What characteristics of a brand would you add to this list if you were starting from a blank sheet of paper?

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Posted in Branded Content, Business, Media

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Is Too Much Choice Ever A Bad Thing?

Posted on May 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

I think the answer is yes. In some categories, abundant choice is fantastic. Travel would be an obvious example, Fashion is another but in others its a distraction from what matters in life.

Some of the categories that I think are over crowded by choice are (in no particular order) tuna, toothpaste, shampoo, eggs. I could go on.

I am literally flummoxed when presented with half of shopping aisle of tinned tuna options and I’m frustrated that I can’t easily find the basic product I want.

These are categories where I see little or no benefit in the comparing and evaluating process. I am not motivated enough or interested in making a decision. I want the decision to be made for me in accordance with basic criteria specific to each product type. I want it to be easy.

I don’t care about the brand and I care even less about the marketing BS that they’ve created in an attempt to help me make a decision. Its vapid.

This makes me think that there is an opportunity for brands in these spaces to think about the way they position and market themselves in a completely different way.

 

 

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Posted in Business, Content Marketing, Family Life

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Do You Know Why You’re Customers Are Customers

Posted on May 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

In the last few days, I found a cafe near the office that serves good coffee and great toast. In my experiences, Sydney cafe’s tend to under estimate the importance of good toast. More often than not I am presented with a warmed rather than toasted piece of bread – despite asking for ‘well done’ or ‘crispy’.

Its a really bad start to the day when the toast is not only very lightly toasted but also an inch thick. In my family, we do the toasting and then we allow to cool to room temperature for maximum crispiness (I recognise that that would be a bit excessive for a cafe order).

My point is that if you capture my bread order and you have my coffee order yet the cafe owners are assuming that I’m there for the coffee.

Its a reminder for all businesses:- Don’t assume you know why your customers are turned on to your brand. Ask them.

It can go to the other extreme as well to a scenario where a business is inventing reasons why customers engage with their product or service. This tends to happen when commodity brands start to perceive themselves at the quality end of the market when really their relationship with customers haven’t changed at all.

I think a large number of business have an inflated perception of the degree to which they are important their customer’s lives. They confuse rational or circumstantial decision making with emotions. This can lead to complacency and ironically to a break down between the brand and its customers.

The cafe is called Palomino and its on York Street.

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Posted in Business, Public Relations, Social

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Ask An Inane Questions And Then Ignore The Response

Posted on April 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

Much has been made about the compatibility of the traditional PR skill-set within the new social landscape. Its a view that I believe in and I think the PR industry has been slow to capitalise on this privileged position.

The critical challenge for all marketing industries in the age of social is the need to create something from nothing.

In a 2010 recent post, Faris Yakob defined social as: People doing stuff that creates relationships and conversations online.

That’s about as succinct as it gets.

By definition, starting a conversation means going from a position of silence to a position of noisy interaction whereby both sides are motivated to share.

Agencies aren’t good at creating something from nothing.

They’re at their best when asked to launch a product or solve a problem or create a piece of content or reach an audience but they’re not good at starting conversations.

In lieu of conversations, the agency world is getting away with low value ‘engagement strategy’ on networks like Facebook:

Do you like the Sun? Do you like Sundays? Like this post if you like Sundays… What do you like most about Sundays?  

A definition of a non-conversation might be: Ask an inane question and then ignore the response. 

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Posted in Public Relations, Social

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The Marketing Industry’s White Elephant And The Elephant In The Room

Posted on April 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

Social Media has been getting marketing types excited for seven years or more. It has defined my career and it will define the industry for years to come – but not in ways that are clearly understood yet.

The promise of social media is far from being realised in my opinion. In fact, I now feel that social media has been a white elephant for our industry – a burdensome gift.

We haven’t really worked out what to do with it.

Social has flattered to deceive without really delivering and the reason for this is simple: you cannot have a social media strategy without content.

So many brands have dived headlong into social without first working out exactly how they want to represent themselves and what they want say.

As a result branded social channels (most obviously Facebook) are barely distinguishable from one brand to the next.

This his also led to a heavy reliance on promotions and competitions.

I believe that branded social is unsustainable on this basis, which is why many have failed.

The elephant in the room during this time has been content.

Competitions, promotions, engagement posts – this things don’t build advocacy. They don’t change behaviour. They don’t encourage active sharing and dialogue.

We should have been talking about publishing, video, story telling, entertainment and brand narratives instead of obsessing about the power of social media because without these things social is powerless.

We should have been talking about content, thankfully we now are.

This is much bigger than content calendars, which very quickly become detached from any specific marketing purpose, strategic plans or business objectives in my experience.

What is content? The fundamental purpose of all marketing is to distinguish your brand from others in ways that drive people to act. Your content needs to deliver against this. How you chose to distinguish yourself is up to you.

Our obsession with social has led us to neglect and dismiss the value of others channels, social has been in the primacy. It’s clear however that we live in a multi-channel world.

Content is king. Social is one of many Noblemen.

What stories should we tell and how are we going to tell them? What value can we provide through content and how are we going to measure it?

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Posted in Content Marketing, Public Relations, Social, Uncategorized

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Eight Reasons Why A Blog Makes Sense For B2B Marketers

Posted on March 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

Blogging in B2B Marketing

Blogging isn’t new. I’ve am a big believer in it for B2B brands. Australian companies have been a bit slow on the uptake if you ask me.

Here are eight reasons why a blog makes sense for B2B marketers.

1. The quality and quantity of a B2B media is declining - Five years ago there were print magazines covering any vertical industry you could think of. There are far fewer today. Getting your message to your audience becomes more difficult in a narrower and less specialised media environment hence the need to establish your own channel in the form of a blog.

2. A quality audience is better than quantity - Brands can get nervous about their ability to build up a decent sized audience but the reality is that most B2B marketers have quite a narrow and specific profile that they need to engage.  A blog can deliver very specific messages to a very specific audience in a way that other above the line and ‘traditional’ marketing comms does not.

3. Blog content allows you to nurture leads at scale - Research released by Google in 2012 found that buyers require 10 pieces of information before making a decision, up from 5 in 2011. Sharing content that addresses key questions that may come up during your customers purchase cycle is a great way to nurture leads at scale.

4. A B2B blog can help raise the profile of your experts - A branded blog can provide a platform for the subject matter experts within your business allowing them to raise their profile and position themselves as authorities on topics and challenges that impact your customers.

5. A blog can encourage your employees to challenge their thinking - Successful sales organisations are able to address the macro industry issues that are impacting your customer base, as well deliver a good sales pitch. A blog forces your executives to take a big picture view of the market and the issues that are impacting their business, which lends itself to a more consultative sell.

6. Good content can become part of your paid campaigns - Product advertising can be supplement by content marketing where campaigns link through to content that adds value to the audience by way of its usefulness or independent perspective. This point is related to point 2 above.

7. A blog can improve search rankings and drive traffic to your website - Websites are a critical part of the B2B marketers toolkit. By creating content for a blog around the most important keywords, B2B brands can dominate search and drive traffic to the website.

8. Promote premium content as a lead generation strategy - Another aspect of lead generation, premium content can be an effective way of gathering information about prospects and learning about their specific areas of interest. Getting prospects to exchange information about themselves in return for premium content – research, white papers etc. – is the simplest way to join the dots between a blog and lead generation programs.

So there you have it – Eight reasons why B2B marketers should blog.

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Posted in Content Marketing, Public Relations, Social

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Awesome Can’t Be Average

Posted on March 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

I got excited about a tweet today because I thought it contained a nugget of truth but then I realised it was bullshit.

The tweet was on the topic of content and contained a quote: “awesome is the new average”.

At first glance this seems like an insightful watchword for marketers but give it a few seconds and it quickly reveals itself as agency style fear mongering. It actually doesn’t help in anyway.

What can you do with this? You can strive to be awesome but according to our wit that’s just average.

There may be a rising tide when it comes to branded content (arguable) but awesome is still awesome and average is still average.

Average cant be awesome and neither can awesome be average.

That is all.

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Posted in Content Marketing, Media, Public Relations

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What Is Content Marketing? A Definition Of Content Marketing.

Posted on March 7, 2013 | 1 Comment

My definition of content marketing in the context of marketing and communications

So after two fruitful days at Content Marketing World in Sydney listening to the likes of Joe Pullizi and Jay Baer (which provided me with tonnes of food for thought) I’ve come up with my own definition of Content Marketing.

The question I thought about is: What is Content Marketing?

I then developed this detailed diagram to provide a definition of content marketing in the context of marketing (including advertising) and Communications (as in PR).

I’ve characterised the three disciplines using keywords. It’s probably an over simplification but the point I am trying to make is that Content Marketing takes aspects of Marketing and Communications and converges them into a third way, which represents a new approach or the new approach that brands need to apply in order to ‘engage’ with their audiences.

What are your thoughts? How would you improve on this definition? Do you strongly disagree? Is this worth sharing? Let me know…

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Posted in Content Marketing, Public Relations, Social

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Day Two At Content Marketing World Sydney #cmworld Reflections On Day One

Posted on March 6, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’m riding the bus into the city for day two of Content Marketing World.

I got a lot out of day one but the star of the show was Jay Baer, author and strategy guy. Mr. Baer delivered two sessions.

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The first was on the subject of YOUtility, which happens to be the title of his forthcoming book. The concept of brands providing value online in the form of entertainment, services or utility isn’t new but this was an excellent presentation.

Baer provided some fantastic real world examples of branded YOUtility and built a very convincing case using evidence and personal anecdotes that highlighted the need for brands to move from top of mind and frame of mind marketing to friend of mine marketing.

The key take away? Marketing today is about help not hype.

I checked into Baer’s second session on the strength of his first.

It was billed as ‘content marketing and measurement’. I expected Bear to follow suit with a high level strategic download, which he did while backing it up with incredibly detailed and useful guidance on how to link program metrics to business outcomes.

Baer made the very valid point that you can’t measure content marketing as a whole. You can only measure at the program level and then roll multiple programs up.

Another session on multi author blogging led by CMI founder Joe Pullizi covered the everyday ‘process’ of running a blog and was also good value.

That was pretty much how the day went – a great blend of strategy and pragmatism.

I will write a second post highlighting all of the tools and tips that were covered during the day.

I would recommend that you check out Jay Bear. You can learn more about his new book – YOUtility – and register for bonus content at www.youtilitybook.com.

What was your highlight from #cmworld in Sydney?

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Posted in Branded Content, Media, Public Relations, Social

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Why Bloggers Should Be Worried About Content Marketing From #CMWORLD

Posted on March 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

Content Marketing represents a threat to bloggers and here’s why…

Content has become a big part of my daily working life. It’s obvious that brands need to change the way they communicate with customers or at the very least add new dimensions to their approach.

In parallel, I’ve been working with our agency partners on blogger relations projects. To be honest, I’ve been bowled over by the price tags that are involved when talking blogger relations these days – one blogger quoted $5.5k for a sponsored post plus an update to her 20k+ Facebook community.

This may be great value for money but I fear that this ‘pay to play’ model ultimately de-values the community of Australian bloggers and has a short shelf life. How do you maintain credibility and authenticity with this overly commercial bent?

This topic was covered in detail following the emergence of the blogger agents such as The Remarkables and NuffNang.

Returning to the world of content marketing: Most brands are at the  early stages of their journey but there are some clear forerunners who have established owned channels and are now commanding their own audiences.

The trend towards content marketing is bad news for bloggers in the medium to long term as its likely that it will surpass the blogging community as a channel for brands, particularly as more and more bloggers are positioning themselves as paid media channels. Power shifts from the blogger to the brand.

Undoubtedly there’ll be opportiunities for brands and bloggers to work together but my advice to bloggers is diversify your revenue streams.  Brands will be increasingly unlikely to engage in a directly transactional pay to play relationship once they have their own storytelling platforms up and running.

Written at #cmworld in Sydney.

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