What Madison Avenue And Silicon Valley Can Learn From Each Other

What Madison Avenue And Silicon Valley Can Learn From Each Other

What Madison Avenue And Silicon Valley Can Learn From Each Other

What Madison Avenue And Silicon Valley Can Learn From Each Other

12 Secret Tips to create hit Global Brand Virals!

I occasionally come across a post on a site, group or blog that hits me just so that I feel it needs to be shared. This one comes from thewww.CraftofInnovationClub.com via a Linked In group I am a part of...It is not that it is so overwhelmingly insightful or full of new and cutting edge content...it is more that it strikes to the core of every marketeers soul when they are stuck in purgatory between company and their AOR on a creative initiative.

I encourage you to click on the links as they add context to the content of the post.

Again thanks to Richard Watkinson, Club Captain for making this available to share.

12 Secret Tips to create hit Global Brand Virals!

1. Interaction/personalization is key. Any technology used must be easy to use - duh! http://en.tackfilm.se/

2. Simple straightforward storyline which should run for no longer than 2 minutes. Some creatives get excited at writing such a long script and produce overcomplicated trite/shit. www.mymagnum.com

3. Don’t just add a logo or tagline to a really cool film idea if it makes little sense! VW and fun? www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

4. Tonality of film should fit tonality of brand. Hello?

5. Leave the temptation usually from the client side to put their logo and product throughout the majority of the viral - including brand colours! Nobody wants to see a cheesy ad. www.mymagnum.com

6. Any personalization or interaction must be shown in the right light - as a hero - friend - star- Not rocket science here, think Ben Hur.

7. Production values must look good! Give me a personalized 3D Avatar viral with a bag of chips please.

8. Let me repeat this because so many clients think a viral is an application they can download for the same price as an “APP”. Production values mean filming, editing and special effects. These must be of the highest quality if you want your viral to spread. Otherwise don’t bother!

9. Any money goes into the production! Not the media to support it. Bite the bullet if you have the balls.

10. Make a viral that has a point of interest - this must fit with the brand focus - otherwise send your money to a good charity.

11. Support the viral - what do you want to achieve. If you just say brand awareness you are missing the boat.

12. Build a community supporting the focus with sites - think it through properly so it fits with the brand and you have the time to develop it.

Finally. Less is more - deal with key decision makers, the best work comes from small stealth teams not layers of management.

"Expertyteace" pronounced: (expert-tight-ass) noun: A common ailment for common businesses.

It seems companies can never have enough “expert” opinions and input. They hire consultants, agencies, advisors and specialists all in the name of productivity and performance. The funny thing is more often than not these experts do more harm than good to the companies they are brought in to help.

I am one of those experts.

I have recently wrapped up a contract with a client who was not only falling victim to "expertyteace (expert-tight-ass)" they were beginning to drown in it. The upper level management would not listen to their staff, clients, retailers, brokers or anyone other than hand picked "experts" who were referred to them by other "experts". They would not invest, support or engage any opportunity with out the approval of the “experts” making the company a bit of a “tight ass” when it came to investing in its community and basically bringing things to a stand still. Ironically the experts were brought in to formulate strategies to engage their communities and grow the brands awareness in the market place on a grass roots level.

Of course every one of us experts has awesome credentials, how could we not, we were referred by other experts who were referred by experts and hired by the real experts.... management. More amusing is how each new “expert” is more qualified than the others or the last one and as such everything must follow the new experts direction. Each new expert will throw the old expert under the preverbal bus, debunking their shortcomings, blowing out their efforts and will be very quick to take credit for anything that comes their way. It’s a kind of predatorily corporate cannibalism. New eats old until new gets eaten by newer.

In theory how could anything be wrong with this cycle?

The reality is companies should be hiring experts. It is a great way to vet a theory, challenge a strategy, support directional shift and engage new markets. It is a great way to get an educated and informed opinion needed in decision-making process and most importantly get an outsiders opinion. Unfortunately the process gets skewed and all to often the ones who should be the decision makers “punt” and leave the process of deciding to the experts, who more often than not are not qualified to make decisions on behalf of the company. Welcome to CYA executive style: If the experts decision is a “winner” for the company it’s a victory for management, if it is a failure, it is the expert gets canned.

This system is fundamentally flawed and creates a win-win for all who are in charge of hiring experts, but exposes the company, its investors and employees to huge risk. In addition, there are some pretty nasty and often destructive side effects to the process.

The most notable side effect of over reliance on experts is the creation of toxicity with in the company. It can become so bad that can destroy a perfectly good team. This infectious wave sweeps through the company creating distrust, low moral, in fighting and ultimately it undermines the entire company and brand. Leaders need to be acutely aware of how moral is being affected, be transparent, inclusive and take charge of the decision making process at all times. If not they risk loosing not only the respect of their team members, but also control of their company.

The irony here is the real experts on your business are more often than not your clients, your staff and your community. The folks in the trenches tend to have real organic dialog with your customers and can tell you more about trends, risks and opportunities than any expert. They just need to be empowered to listen and share.

The best companies I have worked for have spent considerable time and effort to create channels of communication and tools that engage team members on every level of the organization. They hire experts to flush out ideas and look at best practices to engage team members in its implementation and execution. They are not afraid of the outcome or the possibility that someone may be better suited to run the show than they are…they revel in the possibility of finding that someone and empowering them to take the reigns.

For me, I keep doing what I do and have found that the tread marks from the bus tires seem to heal much faster now than they used….

Having been blessed or cursed with the entrepreneurial gene I constantly find myself vetting startup ideas, being challenged by brands that have long lived their usefulness or brands trying to make a change in their identity. My insight is more often than not challenged and then dismissed, mainly because it goes against the logic of conventional marketing wisdom. I ma a believer in the emotion and image of the brand and how those to elements contribute to the authenticity and character of a brand. It sounds personal. It is....

I have an affinity for branding and its place in the totally misunderstood science of marketing. I love how we continue to try and create tangible metrics for the the intangible and want so bad to understand that invisible element of "cool" that gets brands connecting with consumers. Cool comes from being naked...not literally, but metaphorically. A brand is a sum of all parts. It is one part staff, one part ingredients, one part mission, one part associates...all the parts equal the whole picture that consumers see. They see with a set of lenses that is so clear that they capture details those of us closest to our brands often over look. They see past the fancy wrappers, messaging, packaging, ads, spokesmodels and even green movements and see a "naked" product and the people behind it...Social Media has only heightened the consumers ability to see through the layers and get to the nakedness. This ability has created an opportunity. An opportunity for smart and dynamic brands to engage their consumers through acknowledging the conversations and responding with change or action.

Social media and its ability to leverage regional organic conversations into the mainstream media is amazing. It does not surprise me that brands are now realizing it takes more than a mere presence to succeed on SM platforms. It takes genuine engagement and a dialog of relevance to connect to their consumers and their communities. Again, here in lies the challenge...so many of todays marketing professionals are complete devoid of the values the brands they represent posses, therefore making it impossible for them to speak the language of their consumer or their community. If they plan to or hope to engage SM they need to dive back into their brands and become so intimate with them that they are the living embodiment of their products. This ability to morph into the brand should be one of the most valuable skill sets an employee can possess and one employers work to cultivate.

I hope this marks the beginning of a shift in the corporate perception of the role of a marketing team with in their respective companies and brands. It should no longer be the home of focus groups, trade show booths, advertisements, collateral design and company parties. Marketing is the new front line and needs to be supported, staffed and followed as it leads the messaging of the company into the world.

Interesting follow up article in Forbes regarding the "Rush" to Social Media sites by larger companies as a way of creating direct messaging...

Brands Hype Social Network Presence
Steve Rubel, 03.07.10, 11:04 PM ET

Today many marketers are tripping over one another to invade social networks in force. There is a social media land grab underway as businesses rush to set up hubs on the "big three:" Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

All at once, businesses large and small recognize that they need to go where the people congregate. And with 100 million Facebook users in the U.S., this movement is understandable. When your local pizzeria is promoting their Facebook page at the register, as mine does, then you know that marketing has changed.

However, with this land grab, a controversial shift is underway. The trusty dot-com URL--or at least its role in marketing--may be dying.

Some companies are de-emphasizing Web spaces they own, such as their corporate Web sites, in all of their ads. Instead, they're pushing people towards spaces they occupy on social-media hubs. Case in point: UniBall. During the Winter Olympic games I was surprised to see the pen manufacturer use its TV ads to direct people to its Facebook page. There, UniBall is giving away 10,000 pens. Nowhere in its ads does Uniball promote its own Web site. It's all about Facebook. Clever.

Much the same, I noticed outdoor ads for the New York Knicks basketball team had only three calls for action--an SMS code, Twitter and Facebook. Again, no URL. A branded dot-com destination wasn't mentioned.

Finally, during a recent Mashable event in New York, Columbia Journalism professor Sree Sreenivasan pointed out that this is becoming the norm in the motion-picture business. Perhaps this is a function of living in a world where people hardly use bookmarks any more and just use Google.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. It is reminiscent of the mid-1990s when URLs started popping up in TV ads and billboards. Or worse, when AOL keywords first appeared in the early 1990s.

However, this time it's different.

For starters, when marketers promote their social network hubs over their URLs they risk that savvy consumers will see right through it--or won't even register it. Consumers are likely to perceive corporate real estate on Facebook as a lame attempt to appear cool and hip. Consumers are already skeptical of advertising and this just contributes to it.

Second, the use of "heavy artillery"--e.g. advertising--to round up more fans and followers is equally controversial. This would be fine if it lead to true person-to-person engagement. However, many brands are just using their Twitter and Facebook presences to spew out updates, without any thought to how consumers will benefit by essentially opting in. UniBall is providing value, but others don't go to such lengths.

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Finally, much the same, very few businesses treat social networks as personal, conversational spaces. Hardly any feature real employees. And a scant few aim to advance shared interests.

So while it's welcome that marketers are beginning to promote the hubs they occupy in all of the relevant communities, few are really optimizing them into true relationship builders. Most are devoid of humans, e.g. employees, and many look like faceless companies that are trying to check off boxes or slap shiny logos on their site.

In some ways, it makes sense to me that marketers are emphasizing their spaces where people are spending time and where they can be easily found. However, at the same time, with so few understanding what it takes--people--to really build credible communities and relationships, I wonder how long this trend will last. Is a backlash inevitable?

If I were a dot-com URL, I wouldn't write my will just yet.

Steve Rubel is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman, the world's largest independent PR firm. He is charged with helping clients identify emerging technologies and trends that can be applied in marketing communications programs. He also explores these topics on his lifestream site.

10 Things Every "Change Agent" Must Answer

Rarely does something I read or see compel me to send a link out or copy an entire article and post it to my blog. This is a good exception as I really like the way Bill Taylor summarizes the questions all of us should be asking our selves as we create, advise or decide the fate of many of our efforts in the business community.

So enjoy the following guest post:

Written by Bill Taylor courtesy of the Harvard Business Review

As leaders, we have no control over how fast markets grow or how wisely banks lend. But we do control our own mindsets and "animal spirits"--the phrase coined by John Maynard Keynes in the depth of the Great Depression. If all you've got is a spreadsheet filled with red ink and dire forecasts, it's easy to be paralyzed by fear and resistant to change. But if you can summon some leadership nerve, then hard times can be a great time to separate yourself from the pack and build advantages for years to come.

Indeed, when it comes to creating the future, the only thing more worrisome than the prospect of too much change may be too little change--especially in an economy where there are too many competitors chasing too few customers with products and services that look too much alike. Now is the time to rethink long-held strategic assumptions inside your company, to challenge decades of conventional wisdom in your industry, and to push yourself to learn, grow, and innovate. As Albert Einstein famously said, "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." Or, in the spirit of some unknown Texas genius: "If all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got."

It's time to do--and get--something different. Here, then, are ten questions that leaders must ask of themselves and their organizations--questions that speak to the challenges of change at a moment when change is the name of the game. The leaders with the best answers win.

1. Do you see opportunities the competition doesn't see?
IDEO's Tom Kelly likes to quote French novelist Marcel Proust, who famously said, "The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes." The most successful companies don't just out-compete their rivals. They redefine the terms of competition by embracing one-of-a-kind ideas in a world of me-too thinking.

2. Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?
One way to look at problems as if you're seeing them for the first time is to look at a wide array of fields for ideas that have been working for a long time. Ideas that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another industry, especially when they challenge the prevailing assumptions that have come to define so many industries.

3. Are you the most of anything?
You can't be "pretty good" at everything anymore. You have to be the most of something: the most affordable, the most accessible, the most elegant, the most colorful, the most transparent. Companies used to be comfortable in the middle of the road--that's where all the customers were. Today, the middle of the road is the road to ruin. What are you the most of?

4. If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
I first heard this question from advertising legend Roy Spence, who says he got it from Jim Collins of Good to Great fame. Whatever the original source, the question is as profound as it is simple--and worth taking seriously as a guide to what really matters.

5. Have you figured out how your organization's history can help to shape its future? Psychologist Jerome Bruner has a pithy way to describe what happens when the best of the old informs the search for the new. The essence of creativity, he argues, is "figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think." The most creative leaders I've met don't disavow the past. They rediscover and reinterpret what's come before as a way to develop a line of sight into what comes next.

6. Can your customers live without you?
If they can, they probably will. The researchers at Gallup have identified a hierarchy of connections between companies and their customers--from confidence to integrity to pride to passion. To test for passion, Gallup asks a simple question: "Can you imagine a world without this product?" One of the make-or-break challenges for change is to become irreplaceable in the eyes of your customers.

7. Do you treat different customers differently?
If your goal is to become indispensable to your customers, then almost by definition you won't appeal to all customers. In a fickle and fast-changing world, one test of how committed a company is to its most important customers is how fearless it is about ignoring customers who aren't central to its mission. Not all customers are created equal.

8. Are you getting the best contributions from the most people?
It may be lonely at the top, but change is not a game best played by loners. These days, the most powerful contributions come from the most unexpected places--the "hidden genius" inside your company, the "collective genius" of customers, suppliers, and other smart people who surround your company. Tapping this genius requires a new leadership mindset--enough ambition to address tough problems, enough humility to know you don't have all the answers.

9. Are you consistent in your commitment to change?
Pundits love to excoriate companies because they don't have the guts to change. In fact, the problem with many organizations is that all they do is change. They lurch from one consulting firm to the next, from the most recent management fad to the newest. If, as a leader, you want to make deep-seated change, then your priorities and practices have to stay consistent in good times and bad.

10. Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?
I first heard this question from strategy guru Gary Hamel, and it may be the most urgent question facing leaders in every field. In a world that never stops changing, great leaders can never stop learning. How do you push yourself as an individual to keep growing and evolving--so that your company can do the same?

The $127.93 Latte

One of the strange trends that has begun surface in our society is this false sense of entitlement. We have become conditioned to believe that because of “x” we are entitled to “y” even though the two are mutually exclusive of each other. We have lost sight of the free market capitalistic social system that has existed for centuries and replaced with an artificial hierarchy based on wealth, social status, geography, ethnicity, religious affiliation, political affiliation or material possessions. (Don't let me get started on my soap box here)

I remember when I was younger Burger King had an ad campaign and tag line of “have it your way” and had the whole song to go with it “hold the pickles, hold the lettuce…etc”. This type of customer controlled customization was, at least I am beginning to believe, responsible this consumer behavior trend we are dealing with today. I am all for customization, I love the concept of the boutique business model, but i think we as a society failed in understanding its benefits, what it means and have taken it out of context in a way that is becoming self defeating.

I notice it most on a consumer level when I enter my local coffee shop and watch the types of orders that are placed and the behavior accompanies them. The epitome of this has to be Starbucks, where the simple act of getting coffee has turned into a dramatic expression of entitlement and bad behavior. Not only have the orders become absurd, the attitude in which the orders are placed has become down right obnoxious. In the case of Starbucks, I partially blame the evolution of this anomaly on the brand image combined with their abundance of accessibility, but that is a whole other post. Specifically in their case they created a type of customer expectation that then encouraged the subsequent behavioral pattern of their customers. What is freaky to me is how this behavior has segued into society and is gaining momentum.

This type of consumer behavioral pattern has infected our business culture and become a type of accepted negotiation tactic. It seems that committing to pay $X for Y services is just the beginning of the business arrangement as opposed to the totality of it. It has created a trend towards customized deliverables, enhanced services, changes orders and new features at no additional cost to the customer and all for the original contracted price.

Small businesses (as opposed to large corporations) seem to have become the targets here. More often than not they are made to feel obligated to bend, give or concede on things because they are small. Being small does not equate to being desperate or weak. More often than not the small companies are the specialists, the catalysts, connectors and agents of change. We are not small by force but small by choice. Think about this in terms of the auto industry, who would you rather be right now, Ferrari or Chrysler, Tesla or GM. This concept of specialization often gets lost on folks who confuse size for strength.

As a consultant I get contacted very often to help a company, event or organization develop a strategy or branding exercise. This issue of entitlement hits home for me with the occasional client who makes the assumption that “add ins” to our original agreement are part of the agreement. I have become accustom to it and have devised a very easy and clear solution to handling it. I listen, provide a verbal understanding of the request, outline the resources and time and then add: “sounds great we can do that for you as well, how do you want us to bill you for that, should we create an addendum to the agreement we have or should we do a separate hourly billing?”. It is usually followed by a long awkward pause form the client and a “let me get back to you on that”. Sometimes you (as the service provider) have to bite the bullet and give a little in the interest of good business and customer relations. But other times it is OK to just say “No” and let them know they cannot “always have it there way” but be prepared to explain why. More often than not this type of exchange will lead to a stronger relationship, a higher valuation of your contributions if handled correctly.

Back to Starbucks for a minute, I really feel for the front line at folks, those men and women do a great job dealing with some of the biggest A-Holes I have ever seen in our society. They are forced to deal with the customer who wants more from their coffee experience than a beverage. They want to customize their latte into a grande, double decaf, vanilla, chai, non fat soy with extra foam, in large cup, double pump of vanilla, one on the bottom and one on the top, extra hot creation. They want this for no more additional compensation to the person making it or increased earnings for the company supplying it other than that of price of the regular latte. I am always so impressed that the team members in there do it with a smile and efficiency that is inspiring. I am disappointed that they do not charge the customer for the customized deliverables, enhanced services, changes orders and new features…I cannot wait for the day when I hear the gal behind the counter say “no problem, that will be $127.93 ”.