Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Reading the report, it dawned on me: this isn't a Torch issue, this is a call-to-action for the entire marketing industry. For a long time, we've made hay with the grand goodwill gesture.  Often this involves sending some special something-or-other and attendant VIPs traveling around a state, a country, the world.  That's understandable; tours and events can be effective ways to get out a message.  

Four years ago, I played a big role in launching a p.r. tour that helped a lot of people.  I'm still proud of that, but today I know that any message, any gesture will be measured against its environmental impact.   Four years ago, I didn't give that a second thought, unfortunately.  Today, I'd look at buying carbon credits to off-set the impact of my p.r. barnstorm or at going completely virtual with it.

There are lots of viable options, but ignoring the dilemmas and trade-offs isn't one of them.   And the grand goodwill tour is just one of the classic tactics we marketing folks need to wrestle with.  Just check out all the paper that goes into an annual report!   

Mariah Carey just scored her eighteenth number-one single on the Hot 100. With that accomplishment she overtakes Elvis Presley for second place of most number-one songs in the rock era. Carey is now slightly behind the Beatles who have twenty number-one singles.

Mind you Elvis died at 42 and the Beatles broke up at ages 27-30. Mariah at age 38 still has plenty of time in her career to completely ruin music as we know it. Okay, I’m not a fan but I respect her.

Mariah is technically a great vocalist. It takes super human talent to imitate a car alarm, but come on! The Beatles and Elvis Presley changed music forever. I wonder how they would be marketed if they were still around today?

Today, entertainers are all about the total brand package. Music is merely the soundtrack to the clothing, perfume, book, movie and sponsorship deals. A super successful franchise like Mariah Carey employs a team of publicists, marketers, agents and managers to keep her star twinkling bright even without…(ahem)…Glitter.

Makes me think Col. Parker was way ahead of his time.

This panel will be interesting for anyone that is looking to validate their approach to building relationships with clients. It includes a couple of case studies by interesting people.

'Conversation' & 'community', yes, yes. Of course. Given. But how, exactly? Do you want people to find out about and play with your awesome Web stuff without being skeevy about it? Serious about including your users in the long-term creation and evolution of your products? Together, we'll divine the best ways to unmarket and create self-replicating awesomeness.

Chris Heuer Partner, The Conversation Group
Tara Hunt Co-Founder, Citizen Agency
Jeremiah Owyang Forrester
Deborah Schultz Founder/Chief Catalyst, deborahschultz.com
David Parmet Owner, Marketing Begins At Home LLC
Hugh MacLeod Grand Pooh-Bah, gapingvoid.com

This panel had nerd humor. Lots of it. :)

Good marketing doesn't even feel like marketing. It's all about product development, customer service and marketing together. You have to get in the trenches to understand it. Some of the panelists feel marketing was created for mediocre projects.

Online community best practices: Panelists feel online embassies with brand ambassadors are the best way of approaching (YAY, Scandinavian Child!!!). With these communities, you are valuing the participants and sharing information with them that you are not sharing with the general public.

One panelist, who is selling her intellectual property, mentioned that the more insight she gave away, the more she was sought after.

When engaging bloggers to blog about wine they sent them the product. These users were selected because they seemed like they may be interested. They told the bloggers they could say the product was crap if they wanted. If they wanted to mention it, they could, but they didn't have to. They told the bloggers it was fine if they didn't care, The started noticing impromtu geek dinners, They started sending the wine to the parties. The conversations that were sparked were more interesting than the wine, but it was still interesting.

They started noticing that conversations were starting around the social objects. Networks evolve around those objects (like iPhones). People start making social gestures, they beget social objects, beget social markers. Phone geeks will have to start with the iPhone conversation for reference and credibility. As a marketer, you have to remember that you don't own the community.

The future of the economy is free. Giving away something for free helps make relationships. Get out of the ivory tower stop pushing stuff at people. Attend conferences and start network-weaving. Cool stuff happens when community A and B meet.

(Lots of talks about start-ups this year.) When you are a small or midsize company, dont put up a FAQ. Instead, bring in people to ask questions and then answer them online. Bring in customers. This can come out of your marketing or customer service budget. Start with the people that love you to find ambassadors.

They stated that really great brands don't have big ideas. they have lots of little small ones (Starbucks, NetFlix, etc.).

HeadOn! Apply directly to the forehead. Repeat thrice. Become Internet meme.

The ubiquitous HeadOn ad is a 10-second destroyer of ponytail-pretenses that have gunked up the advertising industry for ages. Production values? Who needs ‘em! Persuasion? Emotion? Nah! Humor? Check. Especially if you find rubbing a gluestick on your forehead funny. I sure do.

In an interview with Slate Magazine assistant professor of marketing at Yale School of Management, Dina Mayzlin says, "Part of the charm is that it is so crude. The ad stands out in its repetitiveness. It's intriguing and breaks through the clutter."

Yes, clutter breaking. Like a fart.

That’s Badvertising at its finest. HeadOn sales are up 234% and will continue with an estimated ad budget of $30 million. Brilliant marketing I’d say. For every ad dollar spent they probably make back three because the ad gives viewers headaches, thus spurring demand.

We should expect to see two decades of homage to HeadOn ads. Axe body spray ads aren’t necessarily bad but they owe cultural debt to the B.O. (that’s Badvertising Original, what were you thinking?), Hai Karate aftershave. Sold from 1967 into the 1980s, Hai Karate’s creative strategy balanced on the notion that green gutter water could turn women into lusty cop-a-feel-a-holics. In a genius move, Hai Karate bottles even came with self-defense instructions to protect he-men from the onslaught of aroma-crazed women. Evidently the 1960s expanded the spectrum of advertising in both the good and bad direction.

Since the early 60s, the Godfather of Badvertising, Ron Popeil’s ads have littered the airwaves with their rat-a-tat, Sell-O-Matic goodness. Popeil’s first commercial costs $550 and soon appeared in 100 cities. Similar successes followed the Chop-O-Matic, the Veg-O-Matic. Mr. Microphone, Hair-in-a-can, The Pocket Fisherman, Inside-the-shell Egg Scrambler, Food Dehydrator and Showtime Rotisserie.

It got me thinking. What’s the difference between a bad ad and good Badvertising? I think it should be clear the marketer thinks it’s good, or maybe even not bad. Secondly, the script should rely heavily on mnemonics and repetition. Next, the production values have to be refreshing low and ripe for parody. Lastly, in spite of everything it has to work so well that it proves us ad snobs wrong.

While you may associate this message with the consumption of alcohol, it seems that a case is being made to apply it to the most basic of beverages. Water. Yesterday in Ad Age, there was a story about a marketing shop and a PR agency that have joined forces to stop the darling of the beverage industry from bottling and selling water.

Mark DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum (whose last name sounds like a party drink) have launched an awareness campaign they’re calling Tappening. Basically it’s an anti-bottled-water campaign targeting, as of now, Coca-Cola. The campaign encourages people to drink tap water and buy reusable bottles. Conveniently, they’ve got some for sale that say, “Think Global. Drink Local.” and “What’s Tappening?” Catchy, huh?

Right now DiMassimo and Yaverbaum are planning to collect 1 million used water bottles, stuff them with their message and deliver them to the new CEO of Coke, Muhtar Kent. Their reason for targeting Coke is that it’s the big fish. The goal behind Tappening isn’t to get the beverage companies to recycle bottles. Coke has already agreed to do that. Tappening is about decreasing the demand for bottled water by getting people to stop buying it and helping restaurants and delis profit from the sales of tap water.

All of this sounds great but as a resident of North Carolina, one of many Southern states experiencing the worst drought in recent history, I have to wonder if this course of action is in fact the “responsible” one.  I’ve got seven or eight cases of bottled water in my pantry right now. And if it doesn’t start raining soon, I’m going to buy more. It just goes to show that being environmentally responsible isn’t as easy as it seems.

Just had a conversation with an old client at the University of Illinois in Champagne Urbana. He is a retired physicist who claims he is "crippled" by business. Consultants like me both creep him out and baffle him. That's right, baffle him. And anytime I get a chance to baffle a 75 year old particle physicist, I take it. But we've been friends for a long time and can laugh about it.

He and I were talking about the differences between his career and mine.  He a guy who spent his life pondering things he'll never get to see in his lifetime. He called it "inward analysis." I am a person who deals with marketing and technology with some emphasis on the future. I called that "forward analysis."

He excitedly stopped the conversation and asked me if I knew what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP) was. I mistakenly said yes.

NOTE: Never tell an an old physics professors you understand a physical premise no matter how well you think you might know.

After correcting me twice and telling to to be quiet and listen, he went on to explain an interesting intersect between physics and marketing around the HUP.

In the simplest terms, the HUP is the notion that you cannot both know where a particle is and where it is going to be. The intersect is that we cannot ever know where marketing and technology or our industries are and are going to be, at the same time.  He went on to say that consulting is guessing toward a truth without the benefits of ever arriving at a truth or accepting the notion that truth governs. He called it instinct for sale.

We agreed that it could be argued that one of the central differences between science and marketing is truth. In science, truth governs. Uncertainty is okay. In business, truth is just a word. Especially in marketing. 

In science, not knowing gets a cool name like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or Plancks Constant. Unfortunately, in marketing it can get you fired. 

I think as markets become increasingly digital and networked, we need to start thinking of marketing and business like we do science--like particle physics. We need to be okay with not knowing everything. And we need to start thinking about it with more intensity.

In fact, I believe that when more people are on the giant network interacting in all possible ways, being comfortable with uncertainty will make us better at marketing. Imagine being more certain about our uncertainty in measured marketing.

I think the consultants getting paid to see the future of marketing are already embracing the science side of marketing--drawing more and more parallels between the ethereal nature of marketing or advertising and the physical sciences. They understand that there is no possible way to simultaneously know and foresee any industry or its elements. (Which is essentially what consultants do, right?)  But to the extent they can understand uncertainty in tomorrow's hyper-connected or charged environment, they will most certainly have the advantage. I think.   

When clients come to our firm for interactive recommendations they generally have a lot of ideas. The interactive world is scary. There are a lot of acronyms. There are nerds that keep information shrouded in secrecy so that you will have to continue to rely on them. Or worse, there are nerds that complicate things by overexplaining things you don’t need to know.

As a result, clients try to get up to speed on current Internet trends or hide behind their IT person. 

The first thing they will try to tackle and understand is the development language. Clients will often agonize over the language used to develop their site, but this is the wrong focus. Technology is going to change. Developers are smart and they will figure out a way to make new technology work with what you have established. If you build a site and continue to pay attention to the backend as well as the front end, you are going to make a long lasting Web site that will have a longer shelf life. If you build a site and don’t touch it again for 18 months, you are going to have to rebuild it the next time you touch it. So why agonize over the language? Trust the experts.

As a client, your focus should be...

The most important thing you can do as a client is decide what function your Web site will perform. Is it a brochure site? Is it an application? Is it core to your company's business?

There are plenty of companies out there that don’t need to create anything more than a brochure site. We don’t all need social networking sites.

The clients that are most successful are focused on the results, not the way we get there.

Instead of blowing all of your money on a redesign and then doing it again 18-48 months later, spend your money wisely. Invest as you go along. Pay attention to your analytics. Find an expert that is going to keep you up on technology without boring you with the details. You don’t care if Django or Python is the best solution, but you do care that users are finding the right information on the site.

This approach is not always applicable to large companies. When your Web site has to fit into a large-scale enterprise solution, it is very important to perform the due-dilligence to ensure the technologies you invest in will be supported later by your in-house technology team.

As an interactive professional for the past 10 years, I have seen a lot of languages and development theories come and go. Don’t agonize about the language, you’ll always be able to find someone to support it. Instead, focus on the content and the user experience.

Marketing is all about relating to humans. One way to truly be a step ahead is to take the budget you have for your redesign, double it and spend the second half on committed maintenance on your site. It will guarantee a longer lifespan and will help you focus on customers- the reason you made the site.

Your organization's Web site has a big job to do.

It can be a difficult proposition - and cost you a lot of consultant time - to build yourself a Web site that accurately and succinctly captures your goals, your big idea, the thing that makes you different, the things your visitors need to know about you.

Once you've sunk time and energy into your Web site, it's natural to want to preserve it's focus. Maybe you've concluded that the best way to do that is by locking in a strict approval process for new content, and to instinctively say, "no" when inevitably, everybody in your organization thinks his or her department or pet project deserves some screen-space on Home. Or maybe you have the opposite problem: your communication strategy needs to be more agile and flexible. You have different messages for different segments of your audience, but your Web site seems to have too much inertia for sharp turns.

Online marketers have known for a long time now that microsites, small Web sites with a narrow subject focus, make great landing spots for keyword-driven pay-per-click marketing and viral promotional campaigns. But you can also think of microsites as a possible solution to the inevitable challenges that result from diverging mandates in your management, communications and IT teams.

Here are some reasons to include microsites into discussions about your online communications:

Strike a new tone

Any good interactive agency will tell you that your Web site should have a consistent "voice" throughout. An adjunct microsite can create an opportunity to speak with a different voice: to be lighter, less formal, more personal - or perhaps to be more serious. A microsite may create an opportunity to focus in on a segment of your audience that's more savvy about your subject matter, which means you can go into more detail (and sound smarter) than you can with your main site's general audience.

Be more creative

Just as your main site has it's own voice, it also has it's own look and feel - it's a homogenous interpretation of your brand. A microsite can be a great way to stretch, bend and pull your brand, keeping it limber so as to prevent it from becoming too stiff and stationary.

Explore new technologies

A half dozen crucial things happened in the Web development universe just in the six months it took you to get your main Web site built, never mind what's happened since then. A microsite can be a great way to apply some of the latest thinking in online communications and technology without having to scare the heck out of your IT folks.

End-run your IT Dept.

Speaking of, it's not uncommon for organizations' online communications to be held hostage by a defense-minded internal IT team. From hard experience, the IT tribe down the hall has grown super-sensitive to mistakes and miscommunication. They're slow, deliberate, cautious and methodical — they're not eager to try new things. They'll probably thank you for taking your crazy microsite somewhere else.

Metrics, metrics, metrics

A focused message can mean a focused audience. Are they responding to your message? How'd they get here? Are they finding what they're looking for? Will they come back? It's a whole lot easier to tell how you're doing when your message isn't out in the far-flung branches of your site map.

Allow User-Generated Content

You're right to be a little suspicious of the whole mob-rule trend when it comes to your main Web site. User-generated content can be a powerful tool, but it needs the right context to work. A community-style microsite can be a forum for experimentation, and a great way to spark two-way communication.

Agility

Most importantly, microsites are agile. What did we learn from all those nice, focused metrics? What came from allowing our audience to talk to us and to each other? Which of our brilliant ideas didn't work? Our microsite is lighter, faster, and more agile: let's react to what we're learning now. With the right strategy and the right tactics, it's possible to go from idea to realization in the form of a microsite in a fraction of the time it would take to make a change request for your main site.