Education Or Propaganda At Conferences

Anyone who uses social networks for business will tell you that you get a high percentage of conference posts in your feed. A high percentage.

You know what I'm talking about — the random, expert quotes from people attending sessions or panels. We get these pithy little comments posted on Twitter like, "Such and such just told us, If you're not participating in the social space, you're invisible." Or, "She's telling us now, If it's not driving business, don't do it." Or even, "Wow! People are eager to engage with your brand. They just need you to let them. He's rockin' it!"

Now admittedly, these are often just snapshot impressions and not truly representative of the entirety of the presentation being viewed. But overlaid with my own impressions from conferences, they do highlight three problems for me. First, that compressing complex topics into hour-long presentations often leads to misunderstanding of the subject or even places focus on the wrong things. Second, that far too many conference presentations are thinly veiled sales-pitches for a point of view or business offering. And third, that too many conference attendees are satisfied with the sound-bite quotes, despite the loss of context.

Let me explain.

The Trouble With Making It Accessible

Taking any marketing subject and dropping it into a conference program is rife with difficulty. Not only are you simplifying what is usually a pretty complex topic, but you're also taking it completely out of context. Add to this the need to be exciting or funny or entertaining in some way, and pretty soon we've boiled away the nutritional value and are left with just the sugary sweetness.

I know I shouldn't be the one pointing this out. Whereas most presenters do this maybe a dozen times a year, I'm guilty of it nearly every week with my show. Still, it bears mentioning that maybe we should stop treating these topic snap-shots as "education" and start emphasizing them as "explorations" of a subject.

When I give a presentation, I'm trying to get people interested enough in a subject to want to ask more. That's it. I can't educate people on how to use response metrics or how to craft their particular brand or how to use Twitter. All I can do is get them excited about it and want to seek out real consultation or education. And basically I've just describe the functions of propaganda. So if you listen to me, take note: Don't check your critical mind at the door. Keep asking questions.

Crossing the Sales Pitch Line

Now my next point is a bit grayer. Because the whole reason people speak at business conferences is to somehow expand their wallet. Whether they receive a speaker's fee or they do it for contacts, they are there to grow their business. So please understand that I am not knocking the ulterior motives of speakers. That's how the game is played. However, far too many presentations I've sat through completely place the focus on the company presenting or a proprietary method, rather than on ideas or best practices.

The trouble with sessions like this is that they not only don't educate, they actively skew the topic into philosophical rhetoric. The difference between sales and engagement can be razor thin. Sales is about making you believe. Engagement is about stimulating thought and conversation. And in the conference circuit, it's pretty darn easy to cross that line.

So again, be warned. As a participant at a conference you owe it to yourself to keep your guard up and remain skeptical. Ask those questions and challenge what you see, even if sounds good. The best presenter does not always equal the best solutions.

The Complacency Factor

Which brings me to my last point, that participants have to take responsibility for what they take away from a conference.

Those made-up, but all-too-real tweet examples I used above make obvious what we've know for years before the social networking craze. People gravitate toward the sexy sound-bite. It's easy to use these catchy phrases as a means of explaining the conference to others. It's a repeatable insight that can be used to help justify the expense of going to the conference in the first place. It may even help prove out a person's own business agenda. But it almost never informs a process of action.

Our willingness to accept platitudes before processes, makes for great memes, but lousy marketing. That's why we have so much enthusiasm for social media or digital marketing or the-topic-du-jour, but such lousy implementations and follow-through. It's because we hear the hype at a conference or on a blog post, but don't do the hard work of digging deeper and getting to best practices.

Frankly, if we take time we find that many of the things being said on some of the hottest marketing topics are actively contracting each other. In fact, sometimes a sound-bite taken out of context will even actively contradict what the speaker himself would advocate. (Like being quoted about how social drives business, but in practice knowing that it builds advocacy, which in turn can increase business.)

So for a third and final time I emphasize the need for critical thinking. Don't let star-power or an exciting presentation convince you that you're received an education at a conference. What you're really seeing is propaganda. Which can be valuable in identifying what you need to learn more about, but is no replacement for actual learning about a subject.

The Biggest Issue You Face Now

I recently was asked to sit on the Program Committee for the 2010 MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston. And as part of that honor, they've started to asked me questions and pick my brain for ideas. But one questions stands out above all the rest:

What is the biggest challenge facing B2B marketers right now?

In the past I would have said all kinds of things like brand identity, managing sales expectations, trade show marketing, etc. But this year the only thing that came to mind is, "Money."

Now admittedly, the economy has hit my business pretty hard, and I knew I was biased. So I didn't just answer that way. I started going around asking trusted people that I know. And guess what. They said the same thing. And it didn't matter if I was talking to an agency person or a client-side professional. The biggest issue marketers face right now (B2C and B2B) is budget.

Now we've talked on the show and the blog about why it's important to keep a steady stream of marketing messages even in tough times. But even I know that's pure rhetoric. It may be true rhetoric, but it faces the ugly reality of accounting. So let's take this from a different angle.

Never Underestimate A Moving Truck
Here's an analogy to wrap your heads around. Your marketing program is an 18-Wheeler. It's heavy and bloated. It has lots of potential horsepower, but it's not fast on the pick up. In fact, it downright sucks on pick up. The engine has to negotiate with the gas tank for adequate fuel, which then has to take time to channel into pistons where the spark is produced, then after that gains power and the engine is warmed up you need the driver to engage the engine into the gear and the whole thing has to move the gross weight of a Saudi Prince's yacht. It takes a LOT to get it off the line. But once it gets going, there ain't no stopping it. In fact, they build whole ramps of sand on descents from high mountain passes just to be able to try and stop these things if the breaks go out. Once they get moving, they could take out your entire house and keep going without a blink.

Tortured metaphor for sure, but accurate to a "T."

The word "momentum" often gets thrown around in marketing meetings. But I don't believe many of us really have a good picture of what that means. We don't consider that keeping momentum up on a marketing effort is not just about staying visible. Frankly, you can see a parked truck just as easily as a moving one if it's parked in the right place. The advantage of staying in motion is that you can react quicker.

Instead of the three to six months it takes to get a marketing program started, it takes only a few weeks to make an adjustment. Even a slow roll is better than inertia, because you are at least able to react to opportunities in a timely fashion. And God forbid there's a significant challenge to your marketing while you're not moving. You might as well turn around and let the competition paddle your behind.

So think about it. Is some of the hold up in your own organization just a simple matter of not considering all the vulnerabilities and timeline realities that inaction may be exposing you to? It's worth considering. And it's worth discussing (at least theoretically) with your own budgetary gate keepers.

Spinning Numbers

Marketers all spin numbers. That's what numbers are for. They're there to prove a point. So we try to make them prove our point however we can. But usually the goal is to at least make our interpretation of the numbers seem legitimate and unbiased. We try to create some measure of defensibility in our presentation. And that's just not the case in the latest Feed Report from Razorfish. Entitled, The Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report, 2009, the study attempts to look at how the face of the consumer has changed. And yes, it's spun. Go figure. My trouble with it, though, is they could not have been more blatantly obvious that they came up with their conclusions before they even launched the study.

Ben Kunz, over at Mediassociates and blogger at Thought Gadgets, first alerted me that there were problem with the report, so I took a look. And while I wasn't nearly as fired up as Ben got, I had to admit that everything from the graphic representations and headlines to the way the findings were presented were overtly misleading.

Here's how I put it in an email to David J. Deal, Vice President of Marketing at Razorfish:

==

Like I said in my tweet, I realize these reports are generated to gain business, so they're spun to prove points. That goes without saying and all's fair in love and war.

But I think you got off to the wrong start with this. One of the first elements is a propaganda graphic about the end of the 30-second TV spot, which is so laughably biased it immediately put me on guard. Then you immediately launch into a picture of "consumers" before you define that this is a "connected consumer," so again the report establishes bias ahead of facts. And throughout the rest of the piece the graphics over-hype the value of digital at the expense of other media.

Understand, I am not a TV/Brand-Ad guy. I actually believe in a digital future and actively work to engage my clients in all these areas. But even I was turned off by the bias. That's saying something.

All that aside, though, I'm not sure how you reached several of your conclusions. For instance, how did you conclude that the connected consumer is the new median? And I'm not talking web use here (because clearly most of the US is connected), but the "connected consumer" as you defined in the report. There's a big jump of logic there to say that the group you describe in the report is representative of a new median.

Case in point, we can say that much of America has a DVR. But concluding that all users will now skip ads because the most engaged users do so is clearly false. Most (70%) just sit through the spots. [NOTE: I was wrong here. The statistic is closer to half watch commercials. But my point is still valid.] With this in mind, I question your proposed median. The level of engagement for your study group may or may not be representative of the median. The data is unclear.

Also, saying that people want to engage brands online and using as proof discounts strategies is a bit disingenuous. This equally proves that people will buy newspapers or watch a TV commercial if they know they can get an offer. And really, it's not so much proof of engagement as using digital mediums as another push channel. Engagement is building advocacy, which has little to do with commodity tactics like couponing.

Let me stress that the reason I'm being so critical is that I think the spin has done the value of this report a disservice. I think the data you did present is extremely rich and useful. It proves a lot of things of note and will help me tremendously. But it's all wrapped in statements that are seemingly unsupported and are bound to make people question the report in its entirety.

==

And really, my last point is the most important. I expect a report like this to be spun, so I don't mind a little hubris. But that hubris has to be at least defensible by the data presented in the report. Most of the conclusions here are framed as being proven in conjuncture with other reports that are referenced, but not seen. For me, that's not compelling.

Further, while we can dismiss this report for bias, it's high profile nature serves to make all reports like it subject to additional skepticism. And that just sets us all back. As Ben said in an email to me on the side, "If you really believe something works, and have a plan for doing it, why not have the balls to just go do it without worrying that 97% of the world agrees with you?"

Thank you to David Deal for engaging me on these issues and listening to my complaints. My intent is not to bash Razorfish and they have proven themselves to be engaged listeners to my criticisms.

UPDATE: David Deal contacted me via email today with some insights on why the Razorfish FEED report was constructed as it was, as well as some clarifications about how they arrived at their conclusions. I asked if I could reprint his reply and he granted me his permission:

"...thank you for your thoughts . . . here are a few observations . . .

The FEED illustrations are meant to capture popular sentiments about consumer engagement and advertising. As you can see, we had a little fun with them. The caricatures and general tone of the graphics are meant to impart a bit of humor and are not meant to be taken literally. (In fact, we produced a TV ad for All detergent earlier this year, which we linked to an online promotion.) For instance, the illustration on Page 16 with the police officer is intended to provide a little levity amid all the attention paid to consumer feedback mechanisms like Yelp. However, I’m glad you told me about how they struck you – sorry that they got the report off on the wrong foot for you!

FEED asserts that connected consumers are becoming the new mainstream based on the research such as the Forrester data cited on Page 17 and the “digital fluency” data cited on pp. 18-21. Moreover, for our clients, connected consumers are indeed the new mainstream. This cohort spends money online and is quite active online . . . representing an important audience to marketers. That said, I think we can be more clear next time about what we mean by this observation, especially the part about this cohort becoming the new mainstream for marketers, per se.

The observations about offering deals on Twitter and Facebook are quite interesting. I think there is another point that emerges now that I’ve thought about FEED over the past few days: consumers will respond to brands that make them feel special, whether through an offer of exclusive deals or content tailored to their needs. A Facebook fan page that makes them feel special one way or another will engage them over a period of time because consumers will keep coming back for more content.

Certainly there is no perfect research report, and we are always looking for ways to improve – so thank you for taking time to share those observations so that we can articulate our conclusions more clearly!"

Crowdsourcing That's Actually Crowdsourcing

There's been a lot of stuff in the press recently about crowdsourcing. And much of it comes down to a new, cool way to position an RFP or a focus group. So imagine my surprise when I came across this little gem from BeanCast guest, Edward Boches.

The site is called The Next Great Generation and it's clearing marketed as a side venture that's not associated with Mullen, the agency where Edward is the CCO. According to Boston.com, who did an excellent write up on the project:

"...Next Generation is described as an 'online magazine' that 'is crowdsourcing content from a growing staff off writers (80 so far) willing to share its thoughts regarding life, work, brands, technology, environment, money, faith, sex, and love. The Next Great Generation will be an opportunity for Millennial writers to develop a voice and gather a following, along with a real chance for older generations to listen, learn, even ask questions.'"

Why is this effort so different and worthy of praise? Because it balances the equation.

Too many of us look at the "wisdom of the crowd" as a one-way street. It may or may not be intentional, but we marketers tend to see crowdsourcing as a great way to get the input and insight of a large, distributed audience without having to hire all these people. So we run contests or distribute measly payouts to entice individuals to give their insights essentially for free. There's nothing wrong with this model, per se. It's just not crowdsourcing.

But The Next Great Generation model is different because it offers huge benefits for participation for all involved. Obviously for the marketers behind it, it provides rich, well-considered insights into Millennial thinking, as well as the opportunity to interact with these writers in a group setting. But the writers also have incentive. The site gives them a chance to be heard by people who could influence their career, helps them develop their own brand and maybe even gather an audience of loyal followers without needing to set up yet another nameless blog in the wilderness.

This is what true crowdsourcing is all about. It's about give and take. It's about establishing venues where all can gain wisdom from the collective thinking. And it's about giving everyone a valuable reason to participate. I'm very excited to see where this project goes.

The Sentiment Factor

We marketers have always known that people respond to emotional appeals. We've known that if we can get beyond the rational benefits of an offer and deliver a deeper, emotional sentiment, the result is a more enthusiastic and memorable buying experience. We don't just deliver higher sales, we also deliver a connection that has the potential to turn into advocacy.

First of all, if you just read the above paragraph and it doesn't completely convince you that you always need to be investing in your brand, you've got your head in "a very dark place." Because while message and offer can deliver a sale, only your brand can deliver on this emotional factor that leads to true advocacy. It doesn't matter that you're selling ball bearings to a distributor. We always buy based on emotion.

We Always Buy By Emotion

In presentations to B2B marketers (who are notorious for saying brand doesn't matter), I put their customer's decision process like this:

1. Make a list of companies that offer what we need
2. Evaluate and contrast each of their feature/benefits sets
3. Narrow it down to a short list of those that best meet our needs
4. I like this sales person the best

This list highlights two things. One that, people try to remain rational in their decision making, but the final decision comes down to emotion. And two, the only brand you build with a weak-branded promotion is the brand of your sales representative (or retail outlet) — who, by the way, will be working for your competition next month and take the client with her.

Loyalty is always built on relationships. So if you aren't sacrificing a little of your ROI in each promotion to build that sentiment of affection for your brand, the customer will build that relationship somewhere else, usually with the rep they deal with or the store they buy from.

The Inspiration Of A Holiday

Now why am I on this kick today? Because Veteran's Day has reminded me of our never-ending appetite for the sentimental.

Unless you grew up in a military family, Veteran's Day probably held little beyond a symbolic importance for you. It's not that you didn't care or weren't patriotic. It's just that it didn't hold the glory of Memorial Day where we honor fallen soldiers. It just honored service. Important, yes, but still kind of routine.

But now, because of social networks, we in the US have discovered a vast national consciousness for the holiday. Those of us with real sentiment for it are tapping into the rest of our emotions with personal remembrances and stories, raising the brand of Veteran's Day to something approaching a civic duty.

Essentially, the power of sales has been placed in the hands of marketing. Veteran's Day no longer needs to depend on one-on-one relationships with vets to build it's appeal. Now personal sentiment can be shared broadly by multiple voice in a multitude of personal circles, expanding the perception of the day beyond the personal to the universal.

This is the power of a brand. It transcends personal experiences and affects our perceptions of right and wrong. And while it's an intangible in terms of ROI, it raises all boats. Just try to get away with saying Veteran's Day is an unimportant holiday now. You'd have a chorus of voices against you in seconds. So too with your marketing programs. Because when you promote with a strong brand, you go into a receptive relationship that's further down the decision-making process. You're already at the "I like this sales rep brand the best" stage. Your brand's name has become equal in importance (maybe even greater) than your representative's name. This, in turn, helps to solidify advocacy for your brand's selling points and ensure that there's a measure of loyalty to your company along side the personal relationships with your people.

So what's the sentiment your customers hold for your brand? It's a question worth asking.

The Virtual Economy

Edward Boches (Mullen's intrepid CCO) pointed out an interesting fact on TwitterSaturday night: Virtual goods will hit $1 billion in sales in 2009. Billion. With a "B."

The point provoked the usual reactions from me and others, including Jim Mitchemfrom Smash Communications. How could Facebook happy-face icons and pretend sweaters in PlayStation Home be making money? The "actual" retail stores are struggling and here we are are plopping down real cash for pretend items? What gives?

But then I stopped. Because really, what is virtual? What is a "virtual good?" I know what the articles covering this news are talking about with elitist disdain — Second Life outfits and the like. But what about music downloads? What about online movie rentals? What makes them so much more "tangible" than a musical greeting sent to your friend online? When you think about it, that figure is probably way too low. We just haven't accepted some basic truths of the virtual economy yet.

It's All In The Experience

As my grandparents aged and moved into a retirement home some years ago, they began asking us not to get them "things" for Christmas and birthday's anymore. "We've got enough things and we don't have any room for it anyway," they would say.

So as a family, our response was to get them gift cards to restaurants, tickets to events and the like. The object was to give them an experience, rather than another item to crowd their already cramped new apartment. The sentiment remained unchanged, but the gift itself became transitory.

This is the heart of the virtual economy that is emerging. With virtual goods, the value is not in the physical item that we own or give, but in the experience we share.

Think about all the money spent on greeting cards for the sole purpose of sharing a sentiment. For most of us, this is a disposable experience. We get a nice card with a personal note, it sits on our mantel for a few days and then it goes into a drawer or the trash can. So why shouldn't this activity go online? Sharing a sentiment is no less "real" in a virtual greeting card, right?

Same with virtual clothing or game items in online networks. These items enhance our experience and project a statement about who we are. They make us feel good. We can debate the value of it, but how can we judge a person's personal enjoyment in an experience? How is wearing a logo t-shirt any less a statement in a virtual community than it is in a real one?

My point is that most of us have always valued experiences more than things. We love our new car, but we treasure the memories of that trip to New York. We're a big fan of our game console, but we retell endlessly that time we took out 34 aliens with a single bomb in that game we were playing.

Which all, of course, brings up the next question: If a virtual good is an experience without a physical item, where do we draw the line on what is virtual?

Virtual Is Virtual

Something weird began happening over the last 10 years or so. Virtual experiences began to break their physical bounds. Movies became online rentals. Music became MP3s. Software became increasingly available in download-only formats.

So I ask again, what makes music today any more tangible than that smiley cactus you sent your friend on Facebook for her birthday?

Because of records and tapes, and then later CDs, we have been under the mis-impression for decades that music was physical. We could point to our collection of pressed discs and say, "Look, I own that." But the truth is we never owned anything. We were licensees experiencing a performance that happened elsewhere. The disc confused things for sure, but the truth is we never owned the music we thought we did.

Same with software. What's physical about a video game or even an operating system? Just because it came with a disc and a printed manual doesn't make the experience any less virtual.

So when we say that virtual goods will reach $1 billion in sales this year, we aren't so much touting the growth of an industry as much as pointing out our own ignorance of how much of the virtual economy we already engage in. $1 billion? Try maybe $1 trillion. Probably more.

It all comes down to a matter of degrees. We can say a downloaded recording of a Beethoven symphony is more valuable than a piece of virtual flair. But until we identify them both a virtual goods, we do ourselves a disservice by misunderstanding what people truly appreciate in what they buy.

We can talk about how the toaster auto-senses for a perfect piece of toast every time, but what people buy is the experience of eating a great piece of toast. We can tout a great computer, but what people buy is the experience of using the programs installed on it. We can tell people the cashmere is soft, but people buy and wear it for the luxurious feeling it gives them.

So the question isn't, "How can people waste their money on fake stuff?" The question is, "Why are we still not in touch with the fact that people buy things for the value of the experience it gives them?"

The Argument For Stronger Client-Side Marketers

This week's upcoming BeanCast guest, Ana Andjelic, is stirring the pot a bit in anAdAge.com post on Why Digital Agencies Aren't Ready To Lead. Her premise, in a nutshell, is that while digital shops have the creative chops, they don't have the discipline and experience to manage the complex brand relationship.

I've been having quite a spirited debate on this subject with Bill Green (Make The Logo Bigger) via email. Neither of us thinks it's that cut and dry. Because while I essentially agree with Ana's charges, at the same time I believe she is not so much pointing out the weakness of digital shops but rather the weakness of the lead-agency model as a whole.

The Agency's First Concern

I have personally managed the complex relationships between various agencies (PR, brand, web, direct) working on a single client's business. And let me tell you with complete candor, not a single one of us really had the client's best interest as our first concern. It was a warm and kind surface relationship where everyone always had an eye out for the others weaknesses, in search of a bigger share of the marketing spend and more control on the account. Of course we all wanted to do a good job and enhance the brand for the client. But if it came down to a choice between letting another agency take more share because they had a better plan and pushing for our own plan to make more money, all of us would have gladly chosen the latter.

Let's face facts here: Expecting your agency partners to always work together and push for your best interest is akin to putting a steak in a room with hungry dogs and expecting them to share equally or make sure that the smartest of of them gets an extra portion. It's never going to happen. What is going to happen is the biggest, strongest dog in the room is going to throw his weight around, take the biggest share and leave the scraps for the rest.

The Client Needs An Advocate

This is why for some time I've been an advocate for stronger, smarter client-side CMOs and brand managers. I might even go for a Chief Brand Officer who's sole job it is to make sure the communication stream stays on message while still delivering results. Better yet, an outside person who's only job is to manage the agencies for the client and direct their efforts not based on share of the business, but on what is best of the client's needs.

The point is that the right idea or approach can come from anywhere. But the only way clients will consistently ensure that they will be leading with the best approach is to take this decision out of the "lead" agency's hands. I'm not saying don't listen. Certainly the agency partners have a lot to offer. But ultimately the only way to get synergy across all your marketing efforts is to have smart, top-down leadership that doesn't have a vested interest in getting more budget.

The Right Person For The Job

Of course, I realize what I am asking here. Expecting that the CMO will not be influenced by the excitement of a TV production is Utopian at best. And finding someone to lead the charge who is well versed in all the disciplines of marketing is also wishful thinking. But it can be done. That's one of the reasons I left the agency realm, was to be more of this kind of advocate for the client's best interest. And I've met plenty of smart marketers and business leaders who understand this balance. And guess what — their brands are stronger because of it.

Agency of Record (or AOR) has come to mean, "We are in control." And at one time this would have made sense, seeing as media was concentrated in a few places and clients needed guidance. But with so many ways available now for reaching any given audience, I believe it's time for clients to rethink this model and start seeing their AOR partners as advisors, not defacto rulers. Until they do, I can guarantee that the work they get will always be driven by the needs of the agency first.

The Ties Between SEO And Social

I had an interesting discussion recently with one of the top SEO (search engine optimization) vendors in the country. We were discussing the impact of social media and how it might help his business. And as we talked it was astounding how intertwined and mutually beneficial these two vastly different areas can be to each other.

Admittedly, at first blush these two disciplines could not be more different. SEO is based on numbers and clicks and lifting response through largely proprietary and secret techniques. Social media marketing is all about engagement and brand interaction and complete transparency of our efforts.

"Where is the connection," you ask? Look to the"keywords."

The Bridge Between Disciplines

SEO obviously lives and breathes by keywords. You find what people are searching and you nurture those search words and terms with careful optimization and linking. But that's exactly where the synergy between social and SEO lies. SEO feeds an understanding of the social conversation by constantly being in touch with what is being searched. And social feeds SEO by enhancing the conversation around these topics and identifying conversational trends more quickly.

Okay, even my head hurts by what I just wrote, so let's simplify things: Content is king, no matter what advertising media you use. And both of these disciplines center their efforts around having deep, rich, focused content.

Brilliant!

These two disciplines feed each others content needs. Social has the pulse of real-time conversation and can influence and grow that conversation if properly managed. It then feeds trending keywords into the SEO funnel not after it hits Google in a week, but as it's happening. SEO can then build out these keywords further upstream and beat the search trends by being optimized ahead of the curve.

Then going the other way, understanding a brand's keyword strategy allows SEO to feed the social conversation with insight into what customers really want to talk about. So in a fluid manner the social practioner has a pulse on what the actual search needs of the customer are and can guide their efforts appropriately. The result is increased exposure for the social conversation centered on the brand, which feeds back again.

The Birth of a Discipline

I think I may have even coined a new term for this: SCO or Social Context Optimization.

Now I'm the first to admit that I'm not reinventing the wheel here. I'm just identifying the trend. But having a name and an insight helps to codify the process. And we now add a definitive ROI metric onto the social efforts being performed, while enhancing the value of SEO consultation. Anyone want to go in with me to pitch it? I'm ready. ;)

Treating Apps Like Ads

Our friend Ben Kunz makes some pretty astute observations over on his blog, Thought Gadgets, today. The subject is the ubiquitous app craze that has driven the number of applications in the iTunes store to over 85,000 choices.

Naturally every marketer wants a piece of this action. It's an obvious play. Whether it's a sponsorship deal or a functional brand interaction, if users want apps we want to give them apps. But all this hype comes with a price.

Disposable Development

The trouble is app overload. Even if you just want to get noticed in the iTunes store, you're competing against 85,000 other relevant (and often irrelevant) selections. Even breaking it down by categories leaves you with a staggering number of choices. And then even if your app is chosen for download, the actual use of the app might last five minutes. Extended engagement with the customer is near impossible.

But Ben makes a few great points about this. You should read his entire post, but here's his thinking in a nutshell:

"It doesn't matter if usage falls off from your mobile app because -- just as you refresh ad creative -- you can launch a series of new apps for pennies next month as well. If apps are almost free, and have a short life, then instead of viewing them as one-off software utilities, consider them as sequenced media placement."

Even if a person downloads the Target app and plays with it for ten minutes one time, they've probably interacted with that ad vehicle longer than any single ad placed in a magazine for the brand. And the interaction cost next to nothing to produce and distribute. Brilliant!

Aiming For More

At first I was gung ho and, "Go Ben!" over this analysis. This is a pure genius way of looking at mobile applications, breathes new life into the medium and helps us position why we need to be in the space. But I had to wonder after a moment whether this also highlights an endemic problem with advertising by the numbers.

Don't get me wrong, I still think Ben is right. But shouldn't we always be striving for something better? Can't an app be something more? Here's how I put it in my comments on his blog:

"...apps are no different than any advertisement. 99.9% are effective for a split second of interaction and then disappear from the conscious mind to fester in the soup of subliminal brand image mucky-muck going on behind your eye-balls.

But every once in a while, if your ad is just good enough or funny enough or true enough or what-have-you-enough, it will spark conversation and go viral. People will talk about it. And just like gerbils shot out of a cannon (RIP, Cliff Freeman + Partners) it will be talked about for years to come.

Your points are valid, but they also highlight the dilemma of all advertising. "Launching a series of new apps for pennies" meets the standard "good enough" operating procedure of most advertising. But we should always be striving for better. The economics are right for shovelware, but that doesn't make it good for the brand."

I still think we need to have Ben's realistic approach to what an app is achieving. It's a branding vehicle that stimulates legitimate user interactions, it exceeds other ad vehicles in terms of engagement and we get it all for a fraction of the cost. But it's also a forum where a creative idea can shine. And to date, the ad industry has largely missed it's opportunity to show its worth in the space.

An Open Letter About Social Media Marketing

If you're trying to sell social media plans within your organization or to a client, you know the pitfalls. There's a lot of fear and misunderstand about what it's all about. "How does it fit into our organization?" "Where do we start?" "How do we get there?"

The following is a email I recently wrote designed to boil social media marketing down to a nutshell. This is not a plan or an action list. This is about understanding the role social media can play and presenting a simple model to underpin the efforts.

I hope it clarifies some of your own thinking. And be my guest to lift and use any part that may help your own efforts.

The EMail

Thanks for taking the time to consider the social media marketing ideas we've been discussing.

The hardest thing to understand about social media marketing is that it is not a "media" in the traditional sense. You can't really buy and run ads, because as soon as you do you've turned the effort into brand advertising or direct marketing. In fact, the least effective communication schemes are those that "use" the social medium to push out communications. I may work (for a time) but it's left the social space and entered the promotional space.

Social media marketing is instead about creating, enhancing and empowering venues of conversation, where your customers can do the talking. It's about making your advocates into the stars, with you playing a supporting role. So really a better term is "conversational marketing." And that's what we're aiming to achieve — the creation of positive conversation surrounding the brand.

To get there, we embrace the following model:

1. Listen - Everything starts here...Internally and then later externally we listen to the conversation first
2. Plan - Before we say anything, we take what we hear and make our efforts fit the needs of the conversation
3. Respond - Based on the imperatives of the plan, we take a supportive and responsive role...we are here to empower
4. Post - Pushing out information only happens if it makes sense and empowers the customer

We may never start a blog. We may never tweet. But if we stick to this model, we at least have a methodology for dealing with the social space and know for sure what our involvement will be at every turn.

We'll lay out our ideas for getting there when we talk, but as you can probably guess from the model, it all starts with listening. We listen to your team, to your customer service reps, to your legal team and management team — basically we create venues of conversation throughout the company, applying the principles of conversational marketing on the internal organization first. From this will spring the all-important Corporate Social Media Policy document, identifying the social players who may already be out there in the organization (there have to be a few bloggers, tweeters and forum users out there) and a plan of actions for taking this to the field.

So, more details to come. We're looking forward to learning a little more about your own goals for this effort. But hopefully this will give you a basic understanding of our philosophy, and how we can help enhance retention, loyalty and advocacy for your brand by fostering an authentic and ongoing conversation with your customers.

Bob Knorpp
The Cool Beans Group