What's Next In Marketing

What's Next: Southwest Airlines And The Rap That Defines The Brand

We all talk about how customer experience helps to define the brand. But how many brands really deliver on it?

Southwest Airlines for one. Enjoy.

PS. As of Today almost 300,000 views on You Tube. Who wants to bet it will be over a million in a week?

What's Next: Trust

For the last several months I have probably sat in more than a dozen meetings with clients and prospects where the issue of "Trust" has come up.

Everyone really associates this only with the financial services industry (Fannie Mae, the banks, AIG, etc.), but it has really become a cultural virus affecting every sector.

My colleague John Gerzema, author of the terrific book "The Brand Bubble" (http://thebrandbubble.com), wrote a terrific post about the trust issue.

John writes:
"Trust has moved from nice to need to have. Marketers have a part to play in fixing this mess with messaging that takes the consumers’ condition into account. Passion must be replaced with compassion: Empathy, understanding and delivery on promises may seem fundamental, but they discriminate. Perhaps that’s why Hyundai’s program resonates so strongly. As consumers (and marketers), we need to restore our faith in almost everything and build ourselves back up, one brand at a time."

Reputation management is now more important than ever. Consumers not only want to get a good deal, but they also want to feel as if the company they are dealing with is one they can trust: on being transparent about claims, on providing great customer service, etc.

Which is why it is more important now than ever before that you look at your communication programs in a highly integrated fashion and insure your messages are not only clear and transparent, but that you are also delivering on the promise made at every interaction point with your customers.

What's Next: One Minute Presentations

I wrote a post earlier this week about what it would mean if you only had one minute to tell your brand's story.

http://whatsnext.typepad.com/whats_next_in_marketing/2009/03/if-you-only-had-one-minute-to-tell-your-brands-story.html

The other day a colleague called me to ask for some advice about a presentation she was writing. She said the flow was working, and that she was having a really hard time figuring out what to do with it.

I told her that typically when I am writing (or helping to write) a presentation, that if it feels like the message is not getting across that I likely have written too much. I suggested that she go back and see what content she really needed to include to make her point. Simplify and amplify.

Whether you are an agency person preparing a deck for a client, or a client side person preparing an internal presentation, what would happen if you only had ONE minute to get across your story?

To achieve this, you could buy these lovely CD's and learn how to make that one minute presentation:

http://www.fortunenow.com/products/item18.cfm

Speed dating is based on the same concept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJnXORCW1Vg (here's where bloggers give it a shot...ugh).

All kidding aside, it's an important point to keep in mind. If you can't get across your key message in one minute or less, is the idea simple and clear enough to help you really make your point?

If You Only Had One Minute To Tell Your Brand's Story

Presentation Zen is one of my favorite websites.

http://www.presentationzen.com

Always something interesting about how to make your presentations more compelling.

Here's a great post about a contest created by Australia's Tourism Queensland.

All contestant's needed to tell the story of why they should be chosen in :60 sec.

http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/03/you-have-surely-heard-about-the-best-job-in-the-world-contest-by-now-created-by-australias-tourism-queensland-if-not.html

I'm always advising our folks to keep their messages simple and to the point. If you can't get across your point in a few moments, then you likely need to re-think what you are saying.

We live in a hyper-active world. Most clients/prospects are time stretched and impatient.

How would you tell your brand's or agency's story in :60 or less???

What's Next: No Place For Your Brand To Hide

Great post over on Seth Godin's blog about Personal Branding and Google.

Personal branding in the age of Google

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person's name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, "binge drinking."

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, "I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I'm annoyed by it. I'll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings."

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don't have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you're on Candid Camera, because you are.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/personal-branding-in-the-age-of-google.html

My buddy Rob Norman from GroupMalso posted something very similar about "When Your Home Page Is Not Your Home Page":

http://robnorman.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/when-is-your-home-page-not-your-homepage/

What's the lesson learned here? There's no hiding for a brand. Transparency and openness are the new world order. Anything/anyone/anywhere wants to say and or learn about your brand is out there for everyone to see.

So what's your brand's search engine strategy? How are you optimizing your website so people can find you? And how is that site constructed to not only provide information but also to have an active dialog with your visitors?

It's a big world, yes, but it's really not. How are managing your brand online matters because it's the first place people go to learn about your brand. Are you ready for them when they find you?

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person's name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, "binge drinking."

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, "I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I'm annoyed by it. I'll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings."

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don't have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you're on Candid Camera, because you are.

What's Next: Tracking Twitter

My friend Marc Schiller and his mates over at Electric Artists have developed a fantastic tool that functions as a brand directory for those companies using Twitter.

http://www.trackingtwitter.com/brands

Here's what Marc had to say in an interview published on adweek.com:

"For a lot of clients we've been looking to build a strategy on Twitter," said Marc Schiller, shop CEO. "In doing that, we're always asking the questions 'Who has been using Twitter most effectively?' and 'Who's feeds should I follow?' and so we built a tool for our staff to follow Twitter feeds in different categories. So what we decided to do is just make it public because Twitter doesn't really have a good directory."

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i4c6e3d05307c6e5fcfb50d31e8dcfa48

Very cool app. Check it out.

What's Next: Another Perspective on New Skittles Site

From the always interesting Organic blog:

http://threeminds.organic.com/2009/03/laziness_or_boldness_a_new_way.html

What's Not Next: Skittles New Home Page

I get it. I really do. I understand why Skittles had built this new home page which connects you to all of the "cool" things you can experience with the Skittles brand.

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i615140fc749e47981ab976aca740d6e6

There's only one problem: it sucks.

First, been there. Done that. See what Modernista did with their site months ago.

 http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2008/03/modernista-lett.html

Second, (and let me say that I was a huge fan of the Skittles advertising over the past few years....full disclosure: the creative director's who developed that work are now the CD's of my shop's NY office), how in any way shape or form is this on brand for Skittles?

Here's their Facebook page. Check. Here's their Twitter feed. Check (PS if you read through most of the Tweet's they aren't so positive).

And as I said upfront, I get the whole let's do something so irreverent that we'll get tons of press and people will be talking about out brand.

Only issue with this is the talk isn't going so positive.

Someone please tell me why I would ever go back to this site? Someone please tell me who this helps encourage the need for a bag of Skittles? Someone please tell me how this helps the momentum moving forward in positioning Skittles as a brand that has/had one of the most unique voices in the category?

Welcome to the world of jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon without really thinking about what you are really trying to achieve. For the past few years I've been preaching about all these microsites that are built for brands that just seem to be developed for the heck of it. No unique experience (there are some exceptions, such as: http://demo.fb.se/e/ikea/comeintothecloset/site/default.htm and http://www.driveeverydrop.com/).

It seems as if Skittles fell into this. Let's do something Web 2.0 like and people will flock.

Doubt it.