Project Clarity

Consumers Still Rely on Friends, Reviews for Initial Product Trust

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:16:22 -0500

Forrester Research's Groundswell blog reports that North American consumers still cite friends and acquaintances with first-hand knowledge of a product as their primary trustworthy source (83%). Independent print and broadcast reviews come second (75%) and manufacturers' own websites are right behind in third (69%):

"If most of your customers like you, the lesson is this: help them to talk. Install ratings and reviews on your site. Create a blog and let them respond. Give them online tools and energize them. And embrace the fan groups they form on social networks. Fan the flames."

What about customers who are unhappy? No amount of "influencer marketing" can save them, according to Groundswell. The remedy is to seek out and solve problems of individuals who are talking and - here's the hard part - spend the time and money to fix customer service on the front end to stop the bleeding.

Branding Remains the (Past and) Future of Marketing; Social Media is Media

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:28:49 -0500

Hey, I'm as optimistic as the next person, especially recently, but I love what I call a Competent Naysayer. That's the guy who raises his hand calmly and says, "hey, settle down," like the kid in The Emperor's New Clothes.

Secondly, I love social media. I use Facebook, del-icio.us, ning, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Flickr, YouTube, all that nice stuff. I've helped corporate clients create blogs. I buy into the whole thing; don't get me wrong.

But, will social media be the most important thing to happen in marketing? No. It's an outlet. An intelligent, scary outlet for a lot of larger companies; one in which they have to tread carefully, outside their typical box. But, branding is still branding. Let's not lose sight of that.

Brian Solis writes in the Social Media Today blog:

"Customers have always had a voice, drove peer-to-peer influence, and leveraged paths to talk directly to companies. They simply used the tools of time. And, the more savvy customers used traditional PR and the very mediums many companies employed to reach them in order garner attention, public support, and solutions. Certain companies listened, others did not…and still don’t."

I agree. A brand is still a promise fulfilled.

Creating Content Marketing with a Dog Named Buzz

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:51:39 -0500

My Creative Team, with whom I work on a large number of projects, recently completed a content marketing piece for client Pet Sitters International, an 8,000 member professional organization. I wrote an article for MCT's most recent newsletter, THINK that talks about "The Buzz Factory: Marketing Tools for the Serious Pet Sitter," a series of how-to pdf's for the groups' membership that covers event planning, media relations and social media marketing.

And sign up for the newsletter while you're there!

How Customer Surveys Can Plant Seeds of Loyalty

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:07:09 -0500

As individuals, companies, and product and service providers, we can benefit from introspection, especially at a milestone like the arrival of a new year. In fact, there’s no better time than now to do just that.

While you’re looking back at the business year and analyzing successes, near-successes and setbacks, one thing to seriously consider is to augment that thinking with input from those who know you best, your customer or client base.

There are many types of surveys and other methods to engage your customers in a productive dialogue. Customer satisfaction surveys can help you define or update a benchmark measurement and are valuable in assessing your products, operations and even associates. For marketing, branding and message development, however, a quantitative satisfaction survey has limited value.

What we want to do is get a fresh insight into who you are in your customers’ eyes. What does your role in their business mean to them? We need to determine whether the features and benefits of your offerings, which you spent hours and dollars developing, are really the features and benefits that keep that customer interested in conducting business with your company.

You want to get out of your head and into theirs to find out what makes them tick. Your success, it seems, lies closest to the approach that you take with the survey and how you process and act upon what you learn.

The best surveys focus on the survey taker. That sounds simple enough, but consider this hypothetical approach:

How’s company X doing in helping you with your taxes?
What’s the three best things about company X’s people when they come to do your taxes?
Is company X’s brand promise working for you?

Seems straightforward - and it is - but you’re not really asking them to open up about their motivation for engaging you, Mr. or Mrs. X. And that survey approach is all about your company, not them. Consider this approach:

As tax deadlines begin to approach, what concerns start cropping up in your mind as you’re running your business?
Rank these concerns in importance to you and your business.
Which aspects of company X’s services best put your mind at ease? Why do you think that is the case?
In light of this, what do you think makes company X best qualified to serve your tax needs?

Now these examples are oversimplified, but there are several points we’re trying to demonstrate here:

The survey is for and about the customer. Focus on them in the line of questioning. You’ll glean your value from the responses. And, nine times out of 10, they’ll be grateful that you’re asking.

Your brand identity is driven by two things - how you want to be positioned and how your customers view your value to them. Learning the latter will help you adjust the former to stay in tune with how your create your messages.

Direct the survey respondent with your progression of questions, but give them ample opportunity for open-ended responses as well. Often, this is where the gold nuggets are unearthed.

There are many ways to survey your customers, including on-line, telephone and in-person methods. All of these work, but telephone and in-person interviews often yield the best results because the survey becomes a dialogue or a conversation. You want your customers to open up, which leads us to a final point.

You or others within your organization can survey customers yourself, especially customers with whom you have strong relationships. But the best results come when you have a third party conduct the survey. There are two reasons for this. First, it demonstrates to the customer that the survey is about them by separating your organization from the process. Second, it gives your customer the opportunity to open up and be honest, which is valuable to you and your objective in seeking customer feedback.

A customer survey can be a valuable marketing message tool. You know your business; you work it every day. But you can be too close to it at the same time. You’ll be surprised at what you can learn if you just take the time to ask.

How Branding Professional Services is like Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:49:23 -0500

The steps you take to brand and market your professional services firm is not radically different from your steps up the corporate ladder. In either case, it's typically not an overnight accomplishment - and if it is, you've probably done something disingenuous or perhaps illegal to get there. Is that the 60 Minutes van outside? Selling services is selling people - primarily yourself and secondarily your firm as a group of diverse people with a similar, cohesive goal. So, where do you start building that brand and planting the seeds that grow the elusive word-of-mouth success? Start with your cube neighbors. Do they know what you're about and what you're doing? Can your employees, associates, partners, accountant, attorney, and current customers recite your elevator pitch? Are you staying in contact with them with news, developments, accomplishments? It's a captive audience and they can be your biggest advocate. Don't set off the BS alarm. Start with talking in plain English, everywhere. On your website, in written and oral communications, in your collateral material. Buzzwords are for you and your comrades. The people donâ€™t get them and glaze over when you use them. Not a good thing. This is the first step to what James Gilmore and Joseph Pine term "exceptional authenticity" in their book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want. Gilmore and Pine remind service providers in particular that "people tend to perceive as authentic that which is done exceptionally well, executed individually and extraordinarily by someone demonstrating human care." Become that helpful, smart coworker. Be a thought leader in your area of expertise and give away your ideas at every turn. Become an expert and the media, other influencers, and eventually the right customers will stop by your cube and form a line. Use the web as a forum for raising your stature. Blog, write and distribute white papers and case studies about what you're doing. Speak at events. Call reporters back within five minutes when they do call you. Tell your story until your voice fails - or until you are promoted. Individual self-promotion and professional services self-promotion is essentially the same thing. The key is creating and refining efficiency in your message - meaning discovering and developing your spiel, then creating all the fun stuff - logos, taglines, websites, printed materials, ads and press releases.

NFL Films: “Seven Seconds of All That’s Good About Football”

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:18:02 -0500

NFL Films, the $50M 300-employee adjunct to the hallowed league has filmed every game since 1962 on moody 16mm film. If you’re not familiar with the unmistakable three-quarters speed replay with orchestral background music, then you’re just not a football fan.

Now, according to Wired, the group is working to digitize the entire collection. So far, they’ve made it back to 1992 and have 110TB of football history-slash-data.

The driving reason for this is to provide easily editable footage for the expanding NFL Network, which opens the vault for fans of this stuff. Let’s hope going forward they never change that “mythology” achievable shooting with authentic 16mm film.

Nielsen Reports Overall US Ad Spending Down, Online Spending Still Rising

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:44:44 -0500

Newspaper and local radio advertising continue to lose ground over the the first half of 2007, according to Nielsen. Both are victims to the Internet's rise as a news and entertainment go-to source. While overall spending is down 0.5%, Internet, national magazines, national Sunday supplements and outdoor are on the rise, as is smaller-market spot TV.

Redesigning, Rebranding, Relaunching without Customer Insight is Futile

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:51:44 -0500

Ted Mininni, president of Design Force, writes in the Marketing Profs blog about the tendency to put a new face on a product to try to achieve instant fresh appeal with consumers. Whether is repackaging, a new package design, or a new name to the same old stuff, this represents a quick-fix mentality that often leaves out the insight of the buyer. A better use of time and resources, writes Mininni, is to get clear, usable feedback from customers:

Getting consumer feedback is a vital aspect of conducting an internal audit. Spending time, capital, and human resources on this exercise, if done thoroughly, is never fruitless. Never a waste of money. It's the best bang for your marketing buck. In fact, the results may surprise some executives and lead them back to reinstituting those products, those policies, and those brand values that made them successful in the first place.

Survey Ranks Corporate Marketing Challenges

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:29:14 -0500

Check out the results of the three-minute online survey of marketers from My Creative Team.

Is the NFL Converging Media Network to Control its Message?

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:05:59 -0500

AdWeek reports that the NFL is taking back control of its website from CBS Sports. For the fan, this means increased film footage, both current and archival, which represents a tremendous plus. For the league, this represents the next step in gaining control of what could be considered its intellectual property.

"The ability to control your own destiny and be able to experiment and invest in building a robust platform was something we thought was best doing by ourselves," said Hans Schroeder, vp and gm of NFL.com. "It was hard to figure out a way to evolve the platform when you're doing it through a third party."

Let's hope this great league walks the fine line of journalistic integrity in reporting on itself.

Advertising ROI Begins with Investment in Message

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:51:13 -0500

Seth Godin blogs on cheap advertising (off-peak AM radio, inexpensive banners), raising the question: do cheaper media choices dictate sub-quality messaging? I don't think so. Clear messages can cost much less than even the cheapest media campaign; many times it's just a matter of investing a little time and brainpower. Even the classic "I've fallen and I can't get up" cable ads resonated.

Blog Through Writer’s Block Like It’s 1667

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:39:22 -0500

Ben Yoskovitz, in his brilliant Instigator Blog, writes about beating writer's block - or blogger's block, I guess you could say. Ben's recommended place to start: commenting in other blogs. When you're moved by another post, quickly fire off your blog entry. Here's his style:

"I read it and immediately decided to respond with this post. I didn‚Äôt spend a ton of time thinking about it, evaluating every angle or trying to write something perfect. I just wrote it. Quick and dirty."

Here's an idea, too: you can go outside the web to, say, a book, and become inspired.

Selling Process Versus Product

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:38:07 -0500

Smart people will tell you that if you're selling a service (a broad term, I know) you need to focus on selling the process and not the product. What they mean is that you sell your expertise and experience along with the thing that you deliver to them. There's a couple of reasons for this, I think. One, your product, whether it's a logo, a marketing plan, or a legal document, has more value in the eyes of your customer if they understand that there's a process behind it and that you, as expert, know this process inside and out. Secondly, process can be a safety net for your product as well. If your customer doesn't like your product, take them through the process for how you got from point to point to the product. You may not change their mind on the product, but you'll start a dialog. If they're astute, they will ask questions and point things out as you retrace your steps that will help you with round two of revisions. Todd Henry, in a recent Accidental Creative podcast talks about process versus product in terms of creative individuals and their managers, and how if each will look to the process, better results can be had for the entire team - the same scenario as above. For managers, Todd points out the need to understand that process and product are often one and the same in the mind of a creative individual. If you don't like what you're getting, ask them to take you through their process and (tactfully) point out along the way where they can think differently. Likewise, Todd calls on the creative to constantly promote their process so that coworkers, bosses or clients don't "get lost in the product."

Targeted Advertising to the Extreme

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 19:28:34 -0500

Sorry, ladies, this machine is for guys only, ages 8, 9 and 10.

Excedrin PM, ca. 1970

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:12:37 -0500

Evcedrin PM 1970, originally uploaded by Lisanne!.

This is a great ad from the past. The art direction, copy, the whole thing, I think.