Brand Experience Agency - Groove 11 - GrooveLab

What Happened to Originality?

Amazon started selling the Kindle a few years ago and made a few videos to show its features. This is the opening screen.

Today I saw a TV spot for a new e-reader on the market, Barnes & Noble's nook. Here's a still from their spot:

Now, if you were introducing a new product that was very much like an established one, and wanted to tell people why yours was better, or different, why in the world would you do this? Wouldn't you want every one of your very expensive 30 seconds to showcase your product in an original light?   sigh...

Love Your Brand

It pains me to watch newspapers go out of business. I have a soft spot for the written word on paper, delivered daily. As an undergraduate, I dreamed of being a writer. My journalism professor gave me a shot. That shot turned into the most-read column in the university paper, four years running. I took great pride in being a columnist. Truth be told, I loved it. Every Thursday, I loved walking along the student union, watching as folks eagerly turned to "Rod's Thoughts" (the name of the column). I even considered it as a career path, but moving to Bakersfield to make just above the poverty line was too much for a 22-year-old who craved the city lights along the Bay and the allure of global travel at a big-time marketing agency (that has sense faded, in a been-there-done-that sort of way).

It's pretty much a certainty newspapers will not exist in the coming years. If they'd focused on their brand much sooner, and changed their business model as well, newspapers would've had a better shot at staying relevant in the digital age. Newspaper brands had a bond with readers; a trusting relationship. People depended on them to deliver objective, nonpartisan news. They paid no attention to the relationship they had cultivated for decades with their loyal readers. They made no attempt at transferring that bond from ink and paper to digital. The loyal fans of their brand would've followed. Newspaper forgot the business they were in, which was not a distribution model, but rather a relationship model. People follow people. This is why cable news outlets are led by personalities. We're a relationship economy. Always have been, always will be.

Had newspapers taken their brand seriously, had they cultivated their core loyalists, sustained the relationship with each one, had they brought them into the fold, had they delivered a quality product via digital and not gotten caught up in the ink/paper/distribution model, they would've survived. Let's hope at lest a few do.

Let this be a warning to any organization: take your brand for granted and people will leave you.

Secrets of Creating Great Brand Experiences

Recently, the Luxury Marketing Council asked me to share some thoughts about creating great brand experiences. I was eager to oblige. Over years of working with clients, helping them stand out with their authentic voice, certain tenants for creating great experiences have bubbled up. Here is what we have come to learn at Groove 11 as the 11 essentials for creating great experiences.  

1. Lore

Lore is your story. Think about it. Everyone loves to hear to great story. Your story and how you tell is critical to attracting folks to you. Crafting a great lore is all about knowing where you came from, the stories of the people behind your brand and sharing your essence. This means going beyond the facts. It is not about features and benefits. It is about creating magic – magic starts with a story. It’s a story that is distinct. That no one else can own. Know your story. Tell your story. Take a look at Title Nine and Coach and see how great these brands are at creating great lore.

2. Romance

How many times have your heard it said, “Romance the product.” Well once you have a lore, romance is all about getting people to fall in love with you. If you are a destination for example, romance the experience that awaits your guests.  If you sell running shoes, how is the product going to make me feel? Romance means creating an emotional expectation. Romance creates the desire, desire creates anticipation and anticipation sets the stage for experience.

3. Discovery

Discovery is about letting your customers into the process on their terms. It is about literally letting them discover something on their own perhaps something new that they may have not known before. Discovery includes your customers in the process. In travel and destination marketing we hear this all the time – travelers want to discover something new and off the beaten path.  With any brand customers want to accept and explore as if they found it themselves. It only makes the experience richer. You can facilitate that process by leaving room for an authentic experience to unfold by letting discovery occur.

4. Inspiration

This is the part of the talk where I get down on my knees and I beg of you – please move me! Nothing is worse than mediocre marketing. And the problem with most marketing – is that it is simply bland, void of any inspiration. People: You can do so much better. Create an experience that truly inspires.  This can be done with any business or product, believe me. I once had a client in the refrigerated container business – we created inspiring marketing materials by hiring a fashion photographer to shoot containers in a ship yard. We could have bought stock photography but that would have been more of the same. How is your brand inspiring people to feel, learn, do, or be something? If not, why not?  Make it personal. Touch my spirit. Make me feel it. Move me. Inspire me.

5. Occasions

Create occasions for customers to enjoy and experience you – occasions they may not have otherwise considered, but for your suggestion. There are many current examples of marketers who created all new occasions and increased opportunities for brand engagement as a result. A few years ago, W Hotel created “Girls Night Out” Events in a promotion with the USA network and later HBO.  The hosted evenings included a cocktail party, show viewings, manicures, makeup applications, gift bags with host products. Creating these occasions allowed the brand to reach a whole new group of locals and create word of mouth and buzz among women.  Think about suggesting occasions to your community.

6. Know thy audience

Knowing your audience is SUCH an important marketing imperative that it should be considered in the 10 commandments of marketing. How can you begin to create an experience that will resonate unless you really know what makes them tick? Ask yourself what you know about audience.  Do you know who they are? Do you know where they are? What do they care about? What do they know about you? It is only by really knowing audience that you can craft marketing that is relevant and that reaches them through the clutter.

7. Make it personal

When talking about creating great experiences, consider that experiences are intrinsically personal - driven by emotion, logic, vision, perspective, common sense. Making the experience personal, taps into these basic human emotions to create something unforgettable. It is these personal experiences that drive and enable lasting relationships. From the little touches – the handwritten thank you card, the gift bag, remembering my name and what I like to drink to allowing a rewards program or guest services based on my preferences. Make it personal and you have me for life.

8. Paint a picture

A picture paints a thousand words. Throughout your marketing, paint a picture through words, visual and demonstrations of an experience they can see themselves in. Get them to imagination themselves interacting with you. Show them how it can happen. Disney for example has a current campaign featuring parents going online and realizing they can afford to make their dream family vacation happen for their entire family. The commercial paints a picture of how you too can make it happen. Help them see themselves there and facilitate the next step in the process.

9. Reach out to segments

Segment marketing all about leveraging  powerful niches within the general market. Such groups include Women, LGBT, Hispanic, you get the idea.  Kimpton Hotels has successfully supplemented the success of its “In Touch” loyalty rewards program by running specials for its LGBT customers. This segment contributes multiple millions of  dollars a year in extra revenue to Kimpton nationwide. Segment marketing – by gender, culture, ethnicity and more - can create great loyalty, and lift Think about where the opportunities in the market exist and what segments match the persona of your brand.

10. Share it

Once you have a story, get it out there, evangelize it. Share your story and get others sharing it with you. Design a sharing strategy – whether it is word of mouth or social media leveraging happy customers and getting them to share their experiences about YOU. It is demonstrated that referrals and word of mouth actually has much more impact and believability than other forms of marketing. Incent your customers to share their stories.

11. Measure it 

And finally we have the 11^th tenant of creating great experiences, measurement. So many times meaningful measurement is neglected. And when the CFO asks for real ROI marketers are left with anecdotal evidence.  You can benchmark at the outset of campaigns and you should design measurements – however simplified into the program. One of the most basic things to do is to ask and record  how people are finding out about you. Ask questions after sale like “How are doing? What’s working? What’s not working? Why or why not? Would you share your experience with others? How is this experience better/worse than others?” Having measurement in place is key to adjusting strategies and refining again and again. This can be for a year over year campaign or optimizing on the fly. Measurement creates efficiency and helps hone and prove marketing success. And it improves the discipline of instinctual marketers.

Lessons Learned at Ad:Tech 2010

Mike McGinty and I went to Ad Tech last week to see what we could see. We spent 2.5 days immersed in all things digital at Moscone Center. As usual the rooms were cold, the food was soggy. But the gadgets were hot. For example there was a great twitter wall supplied by Dedo Inc. and a recharging station where you could drop off your phone. (LOVED THAT!)

But who cares? We went to see, and learn and be inspired. And at times we were.

The Volkswagen Real Racing Game  from Firemint is a free IPhone app that puts you in driver’s seat of a Special Edition GTI. It has all the bells and whistles of an integrated social campaign. Results can be tweeted, facebooked or you can rip a video of your race and post it to You Tube. It’s a phenomenon with 4 million + downloads world-wide. Better still, it drives those highly targeted 18-35 year old males to a take the keys. Integrating mapping into the application encourages players to test drive the real thing at their local showroom. They track everything.Test drives are up something like 56% as a direct result of the game. Not bad for an

IPhone

app. 

  
Levi Strauss is doing something really cool with their multi-channel Go-Forth campaign. They are showing some deep pockets (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) in creativity and innovation.

Jaime Cohen-Szulc, chief marketing officer of Levi’s brand and senior vice president at Levi Strauss & Co, presented the case study. He talked a lot about how the convergence of technology and user experience is creating a new frontier for brands and consumers. (I ripped some of his quotes from Mobile Marketer. Their recorder was on, mine was not).

Jaime Cohen-Szulc reminded us that “Everybody has the sense that their business is going to change, but most people don’t know how.” 

He tied it to the rapid changes we are all experiencing by noting “Important trends that are driving change include faster product lifecycles and challenging macro-economics, as well as the increasingly complex marketing mix. The reason why the Internet and digital channels [such as mobile] are so important, is they touch the core of human values—the need to connect, the need to feel loved and the need to feel productive, which can be really difficult to do in real life.”

He captured the impact of both the Levi and the VW campaigns by telling us “If you enact changes for the people, they will carry your brand,” he said. “It’s about moving from loyalty to advocacy."

He underscored the power of this by saying “Brand loyalty is very passive, but brand advocacy is about being active, not passive.”

Over and over again this was reinforced by case studies. When we went to the expo floor, where we saw the technologies and platforms (architectures in Groove speak) needed to advance  these changes.

Our big take away: you have to give up control to gain advantage. This is a bit scary, but it is also extremely exciting. I don’t remember another time in history when innovation was so democratized. We are just a keystroke away from …

The Subject is...

Looking over my email box this week it seems I can save a ton of money, be better dressed and win a trip to DC. Not to mention learn 5 reasons why digital agencies will fail and download Turbo Tax.  Oh and I forgot, Jenny is out sick today and my boss wants a creative brief on his desk by 5:00. 

If my email box is anything like yours, it is a mash-up of my work, my interests, and my shopping history. The noise, if you will. As a marketer how do you cut through it? By creating a subject line that resonates. How do you know what resonates? By testing many subject lines and seeing what performs best.

This week the concept of subject line testing came up in a big way for one of my clients. They hosted a webinar aimed at the healthcare industry and although we had 175 people attend the live event the client felt the response was not as good as an event they did last year about this time. When we analyzed the outreach experience we quickly saw why.

Last year they partnered with a publisher to promote a webinar to the healthcare industry. This year, same publisher, same outreach. The "from" line was the same, a trusted source of this community. The topic was similar access to patient medical information via  Electronic Health Records (EHR).

The subject line used was:
Be Ready to Implement EHR – A Success Story From One of America's Best Hospitals
The results….over 1500 clicks and 850 people registered.

This year the subject line was:
Learn to transform healthcare IT with XYZ (insert technology solution here)

This one drew half the number of clicks and only 25% of the registrations. What went wrong?

When you only have 50 characters and a few seconds to capture someone's attention, it can be difficult to know: timing? Topic?Urgency? Or was it just the words we used?

What is interesting is the “Be Ready" subject line broke rule #1. By all standards it was too long, with 88 characters. You could argue that the hyphenation created the illusion of brevity and quickly demonstrated value. “Be Ready” set a tone of urgency as well. (Get more email best practices here)

In our second instance, we opened with “Learn,” I see "Learn" used a lot. Learn vs Be Ready would be an interesting test. Luckily we get another chance to test our subject lines as the archive of the webinar is now ready for promotion. I will let you know what we learn.

Don’t give customers what they want…

...give them what they don’t know they want – yet.

Henry Ford is said to have replied to the question of market research like this: “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said a faster horse.”

Meet the Millennials

Most managers of consumer brands have a neverending quest to reach the most influential consumers of the moment. In this moment, one group we are paying a great deal of attention to is the Millennials (aka Gen Y or Echo Boomer).

Millennials are one of the most refreshingly interesting and diverse groups. Their influence, values, and concerns are shaping our world and will continue to do so for decades to come. So whether you manage a consumer brand, a non-profit, a B2B, or just happen to know someone under 30, I suggest it is a moment well spent for better understanding Millennials.  

Snapshot of Millennials

•       Broadly defined as being born between 1979 and 1999 (1980 – 2000 for quick memory)

•       Number nearly 80 million 

•       Larger in size than Baby Boomers

•       Youngest are still in elementary school; vanguards 21-30 are just starting their careers

•       2007 global quantitative study of Millennials in 13 countries found the No. 1 attitude unifying the generation was: "I would fight for a cause I believe in."

10 Unifying Characteristics of Millennials

1. A generation that is the most diverse in history
2. A generation marked by social awareness and seeks to change the world
3. A generation that is connected and for whom social media plays an integral part in relationships
4. A generation that will surpass previous generations in influence, spending power, and wealth by virtue of their size and values
5. A generation so determined to excel that failure is not an option
6. A generation known by a mix of ambition and practicality with a solid underpinning of values
7. A generation that is comfortable with credit and knows money plays a crucial role in reaching goals
8. A generation for which technology plays a natural part of everyday life
9. A generation that believes in doing work that has an impact on the world
10. A generation that seeks authenticity and can see through imitators

For marketers, gaining insights into Millennial lifestyles, values, and concerns will help you engage and activate this audience – and ultimately build more compelling experiences and deeper relationships. Considering their influence, it is well worth it.

 

Millennial Experience

 

 

 

Building a Better Brand Relationship

It's no secret. A shared quality of great brands is their ability to build relationship with their customers. Now, the relationship I'm talking about is more than doing business together. Transactions do not guarantee a relationship. Relationships are built over time. They require care and nurturing, and are the product of continual dialog based on shared interests. When you think about it, it's no different than the relationship advice you get for your own significant other(s) in your personal life. And while brand relationships can flourish and evolve over time, they require ongoing brand engagement to keep things interesting and relevant. Engagement can come in many forms. Today, with the new consumer culture that social media provides, we can engage with customers in truly innovative ways. What’s more, often the engagements are led by customers themselves. Take a cue from these notable brands and see how they are engaging customers.

Getting ready for Brand ManageCamp

In an ideal world all of my clients (and potential clients) are at the MGM, Las Vegas with me for the next two days of Brand ManageCamp. The real opportunity here is, of course, to connect the dots. The dots between the power of a well-branded organization; the decentralized and fragmented transformation of media communications; the way conversations (two-way dialog happening in real time), are forever changing traditional advertising and marketing (and even WOM); and how my clients' ability to capture the effects/mood/results of those conversations and to react/respond/re-engage will determine their ultimate success. The dots from my brand (who I am) to my customers (who I'm in dialog with) to our meaningful, measurable relationship (loyalty and advocacy) will be discussed over the next 48 hours. It's going to be juicy.

Two Brands finding their way back…to their customers

 

Starbucks & Bud Light are fighting back. These two iconic brands lost their way and as a consequence sales slipped. Check out these articles Business Week, Ad Age and Wall Street Journal.

So how did they get here and how do they get back?