Create Value.

In client meetings recently, I have been integrating a list of marketing tenets I believe marketers must pay greater attention to. One of these is 'Create Value' and I use the illustration below as my visual.
Is that luggage or a fashion accessory the lady is seated on? Of course, it doesn't matter what WE think...only what SHE thinks.

This is not a rocket-science concept. From premium consumer packaged goods to market-leading technology, we all know the principle. So why do so many brands (especially in technology) get a FAIL on execution?

My Apple MacBook Pro purchased last November is far from perfect: it locks up, crashes, is impenetrably complex at times...yet I still love it. Is it because it is really a 'better' computer worth twice the price of a comparable Windows-based system, or because it is a 'cooler' computer? In Best Buy last night, I stared at a shelf with over two dozen options for small external hard drives for backing up my computer. How was I supposed to differentiate Western Digital from Iomega, Seagate, HP or Toshiba? In the Bluetooth headset aisle, I faced off against a dozen options. Which one could I trust to make my calls clearer? No manufacturer...not Seagate, Motorola, Jawbone or Toshiba...has built a halo of value around its products like Apple has.

Certainly, brilliant design has something to do with that. Apple continues to set a standard for product and packaging design that competitors can only aspire to. But the marketing aura the company has surrounded its technology with makes the products cool...essential...flawless despite flaws. Apple shows that value is not just something created by brainy engineers or industrial designers. The iPhone's iconic silhouette ads or the companies hip stores with their "genius bars" speak to the inner geek in everyone...saying 'I can make even YOU cool.' It is such wonderful marketing, it conveys trust, even if undeserved.

In practical terms, we can't all be Apple. But, as marketers, can always grade our work against the objective of having our work positively add to customer perceptions.

Posted by jcioban at 6:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Free Information for the Asking

In the world of proliferating marketing applications, there are still some applications that are free that most marketers do not use well. These include Alexa and Quantcast. Web pros certainly know about both, but I am continually surprised how many marketers are not aware of either.

With so much of marketing tied to Internet activity and people's search patterns, Alexa provides a host of free data on web traffic and search activity for almost all reasonable traffic sites. When trying to determine what brings people to sites and what type of relative activity other industry/competitor sites get, sure Compete.com is more thorough, but for many purposes, Alexa's free data will get you started.

Quantcast overlays raw data with more demographic profiling information to help you search out relevant sites and explore web traffic patterns in more depth. It takes some learning, but Quantcast can provide lots of useful information especially in consumer segments.

Sure the best things in life are not always free, but some pretty good things certainly are.

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The Broadcast Value of Customers.

My business e-mail Inbox is embarrassing. I have 13074 unread messages.

My two personal e-mail accounts are a little better. Hotmail has only about 400 unread messages at present. GMail has only about 120.

I use IM at work, Skype at home, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a few other networks. I listen to commercial-free Internet radio, and watch some TV when I cook dinner or am eating my usual Euro-fashion 10pm dinner.

Scarily, I am not quite as hard to reach (for marketers) as some millennials, whose rejection of e-mail, TV and OTA radio makes them phantoms to most advertisers.

The point? If you want to break through to me with a new marketing message (business or consumer), you need to think how to stand out in MY world. Ads used to be a little utilitarian for people in my age group (50+). We learned about new technologies and new consumer offerings via ads. Today, when I want a new technology/product I research it actively online, so there is no need for ads that reach me when I have no interest in purchasing. And while not all my cohort acts that way, the treasured under 30 crowd does. In my busy, media-saturated life, I routinely bypass ads in print, and ignore only the most unusual on TV or online. And so do a growing cadre of other prime buyers.

What gets my attention? Frankly, very little unless I seek it out. Even exciting new blogs, news outlets or technologies have a hard time breaking the patterns I have set.

This landscape explains why bold brands like Nike do controversial ads like the "Tiger and Dad" ad that ran just before the Masters. But it aso explains why smart brands treasure every customer relationship or contact they can acquire and nurture, and why creativity is not always the first approach in today's ad landscape. Look at Coke and Pepsi's consumer-driven, community-service strategies as examples of engaging a traditional customer set through the new lens of value and relationship. Today, a customer is worth more than ever, because in addition to his/her revenue value, each person has a 'broadcast value' as a brand voice. Each customer is a network of contacts who you can reach...if you can get your customer to talk for you.

Trained in mass marketing, these concepts are foreign to many current generation marketers. But the numbers don't lie. Getting the word out, regardless of your business, means cultivating customer relationships like never before. From social media strategies to next-gen CRM, smart brands build conversations with customers for the knowledge they gain and the networks they can leverage.

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The Non-Linear Evolution of Print

This past Sunday, a 21-year old senior at NYU made me rethink the world of communication. His name is Cody Brown, the founder of NYU Local and kommons. He did this in an article on TechCrunch that peripherally talked about iPads and eBooks but that was really a rallying cry for authors intent on remaking the face of authoring. His most damning statements were his closing sentences:
"I'm 21, I can say with a lot of confidence that the 'books' that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great. "

With those simple words, and armed with an iPad as his weapon du jour, Cody and his cohort most likely WILL change the face of how we read.

As a 52-year old, Ivy-educated, entrepreneurial business owner, I am used to multitasking and absorbing sound bites and factoids to rapidly assemble content and solutions for clients. But, as part of a past generation schooled in linear reading habits, I am also one of the 'rationalizers' for the world of print. Sadly, I am running out of 'rationale' with the flood of new platforms being put in the hands of a generation educated in a non-linear, parallel-processing world.

Last week, I visited a client who is the president of a company that manufacturers high-end inkjet printing systems...a person whose livelihood is tied to paper-based communication. As he pulled out his iPad, he said thoughtfully "I think....this is a game-changer." He proceeded to tell about his 20-year old son who recently published his first book -- not through a traditional publishers,but through one of the growing cadre of self-publishing platforms available. He described how information was being freed in new ways and how he could see that his company's future was going to be tied to an ability to create/supply applications that carried along devices as a potential output medium, not as the primary offering.

But that concept is but prologue to Cody Brown's elegiac to books as we know them. Print apologists still defend the territory we call 'books' as unassailable. Cody describes them as outmoded. He, and a growing cohort of followers, see content as an 'experience' not a 'read.' They envision a title not necessarily as a linear progression, but as an immersive experience. The iPad provides an on-ramp to that vision. It will take time, but as more and more authors of all age-groups grasp his concept, content publishing as we know it will change.

Admittedly, as Cody points out, there will be literary techniques and there will be iPad techniques...or more generically, iPublishing techniques. in iPublishing, every word on a 'page' becomes a potential launchpad for non-linear exploration, learning or experience-building. A daunting concept today because we have not mastered that form of authoring yet. But give it time...

And that is the ultimate takeaway. In all the conversation over iPad, content owners...from publishers to corporate marketers, have a chance to reset the benchmark for how content is presented and promoted. Paper-based documents will likely not disappear in our business lifetimes, but their purpose, content, formats and production techniques will morph to accommodate changing preferences and requirements. And where there is change, there is opportunity.

I'm 52, and I can say with a lot of confidence that we are about to enter the next phase in the presentation of content to audiences. This is great.

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Friends and Followers in STM Markets

Reading Edward Boches very thoughtful post title 'Social Media and Brand Consistency', I began to think how disconnected his concepts were from the day-to-day behaviors of many marketers in scientific, technical and medical markets. In some cases, the "change comes slowly" modus operandi of the medical community is built on reasonable concerns about process, privacy and caregiving. But in other markets, the challenge of how to integrate a new way of thinking about marketing based on being 'present, visible, searchable and useful', is complicated by the realities that the audience is more targeted, not always social by nature, and often 'reclusively elusive' in behavior.

Social media's role in STM markets is evolving, in part because even doctors, chemists, engineers, etc. are people. Emerging social networks like Sermo.com are providing a way for technical people to connect and are helping break through barriers of reticence.

But for many manufacturers or service providers seeking to engage with these audiences, getting a social media program off the ground is proving to be a patience-taxing exercise. Social media requires a clear strategy and clear benefits to encourage readers to engage. In a world trained to talk about products/services and applications first, this soft concept of engagement can be challenging.

For example, Mettler Toledo AutoChem (a customer) makes in-situ process chemistry measurement devices. They are are also skilled marketers who understand benfits-driven marketing. They recently opened a Twitter account that now has 107 followers. Unfortunately, nearly all are journalists, consultants or other non-customers. So where are their customers? The answer is in their own affinity groups (e.g. Biotech & Pharma Professionals Network on LinkedIn) trying to avoid advertising messages from manufacturers. Reaching into those fragmented groups is a more time-consuming process less aligned with traditional measures of marketing ROI.

Does that mean social media activity is a waste of time? The answer is a relatively clear no. As Ed Boches points out, companies today are measured daily for the consistency of their "behavior" and not for the strength of their marketing messages -- meaning great products, supported by great service, is more important than ever. Today, social media tools are the most direct means for listening to the markets assessment of your efforts as a company, and thus gauging your prospects for growth.

As a result, we encourage STM clients to create at least a basic social media plan, first to ensure they maintain a pulse on their customers, and second to ensure the development of core social media skills which we believe will only become more important over time, not less important. Social media engagement is a journey, not a destination. And while the buzz is in consumer segments, the relevance of these techniques in STM markets is real and marketers must learn how to apply them to use these once arcane, but incresingly mainstream, techniques like any other element in a well-planned marketing mix.

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