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The Open Brand

With Adver-boyfriend off following his favorite NCAA team around the country this weekend, I had time to catch up on three industry books that have been tempting me from the bedside table. This week, I'll share perspectives on each of those, starting with:

By Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins
Home agency: Resource Interactive

There are two schools of thought on the role of the 'expert' in consulting industries like ours: (1) it's our job to be the smartest guy in the room on our 'best at' subject or (2) it's our job to make our client feel like the smartest guy in the room.

Mooney/Rollins definitely fall in the latter. They've built a book that converges all the big ideas and groundswell of momentum around the social Web into a simple story on impact and action.

Kind of a Daring Book for Girls for CMOs

I say 'built a book' because it's the structure that agency wonks will be attracted to. A visual approach to the ideas and concepts we talk about every day (Come on, who among us hasn't taken a little real-work inspiration from one of Armano's quick sketches of clarity?), repeatable cases and solid frameworks.

For clients and newbies, it's all content.

A few of the ideas that got me scribbling notes in the margin:

After outlining the pitfalls of business-as-usual in a new medium, Mooney/Rollins lay out a New Relationship framework in simple Venn diagram fashion. The center is passion, overlapped on three sides by consumers, community and brand.

I love the idea that passion is the shared quality - the opportunity to build engagement (with people, with networks, with employees). At brunch this weekend, we were talking about the phenom coup Resource's PR team pulled off: Four paragraphs about The Open Brand in this month's cover story of Fast Company. When a friend - who, I should preface, knows everything about a million things I know nothing about - asked me what Fast Company is? And, to try to describe it now ... is, stalling. But, you probably remember when it launched, in the heydey of dot.com, when we were all rethinking work and what it means to find both delight and challenge in what we do every day, and essentially finding passion in work. I like to think that ethic has found its resurgence in the social Web.

The Open Brand also has a great information graphic on the motivations of iCitizenry, plotted on a continuum of everyday to elite:

• 74% are motivated by competence: "I can" (use Web tools for fun, learning and efficiency)
• 16% by collectivism: "I connect" (connect and share with people who have similar interests)
• 7% by culture change: "I am" (effect change that improves companies, products or the experience of others)
• 3% by celebrity: "I matter" (seek recognition or some degree of fame)

In a conversation (darn, I used THAT word) that has largely been shaped by the 1% Rule and other outcome-based frameworks, it's interesting to turn to the why instead of the what.

I digress. The framework is followed by a hall-of-fame of sorts of some of the loudest voices on the Web - from Kos to the diva of Amazon.com product reviews.

Someone I follow on Twitter - maybe Jaffe - asked (more eloquently than I am recreating here) is the Web creating more amateur professionals or is it simply giving us access to more true professionals. It's an interesting question for ad bloggers, but in the largest context of the social Web, it has another dimension: are there new 'careers,' new needs for voices and approaches (like the mega reviewers) that have essentially become the foundation of everything else?

That said, I think for most marketers, the challenge isn't in understanding the outlyers. They're relatively easy to learn about with various social aggregating tools and their own self promotion. Your agency can attack those (with some degree of grace or lumbering) the way they could any other opinion leader. The challenge is understanding the common person. What the key profiles of social behavior are and how those cross-index beyond age ... with a wider swath of loyalty and offline behavior.

I'm guessing the ethnographers at Resource save that level of detail for folks willing to spend a little more than $16.95...

Why we do this: Sony foam city

Making a movie seems hard. But, you still want to shutter a downtown and create a cinematic mess. Sound familiar? Then advertising is definitely the career for you.

Check out these early shots from the "set" of the upcoming Sony spot dubbed foam city. Apparently millions of gallons of foam were dumped on the city to create the base scenes.

Now, come on, that looks like fun. And a much better way to spend the day than, say, pitching hot dogs.

The social media spinners are already buzzing about the coming spots - so, here's hoping they'll be as delightful as the original Bravia bouncing balls.

 

Dogears: Good stuff I pre-read for my favorite readers

Get ready, I cleared my feeds. Found some really excellent stuff. You're gonna want to start clicking:

Look out Orange Barrel: Cybertecture’s Skinable Buildings

Typographica's Favorite Typefaces of 2007

Slideshow: The Brand Gap, how to bridge the distance between strategy and design

Decommoditizing Social Networks By Connecting User Profiles Via OpenSocial

Groundswell shares free data about consumers' social behaviors around the world

New ways to learn about your future employer (or ding your old one): The house blog's look at LinkedIn Company Profiles

And, an Ad Age tip for interviewees: Tell Me What Sucks

Web 2.0 Funding Jumps 88% in ‘07, Facebook Accounts for 22%

Case Study: Dissecting the Dell Regeneration Graffiti Facebook Campaign

Future Now's envy list: Top 10 online retailers by conversion rate

Online early adopters programming for the masses

Are we moving too fast?

Last week, over on Compete’s blog, Cynthia Stephens wrote about the incredible impact Oprah’s live, online book club event has had on site traffic.

Quick catch-up for those of us not in the Oprah know: The show’s book club read for February was A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. To promote the author and the book, Oprah is hosting a 10-week online class on Awakening Your Life’s Purpose with the author.

Participants can watch the classes live or archived and each registered fan gets a workbook to track their own learnings and observations.

Technologically speaking, this isn’t a big break through. Most of us have been enduring Web conferences since the late 90s. But, the content was so compelling and so well-fit for the audience that the response nearly crashed the live programming and quickly catapulted Oprah’s site ahead of traditional American favorites:

"The number of visitors to Oprah.com topped five million in February, making her site one of the top 225 ranked sites in the United States. To put this in perspective, more people went to check out Oprah.com in February than the popular NASCAR, eHarmony, Fidelity, Barnes and Noble or Walgreens sites." __Compete blog (Lots more stats here.)

Meanwhile, locally, I was following David Armano and others on Twitter as they covered Ad Age's Digital Marketing Summit. As thrilling as it was for me, when I tried to share the content about what was going on with friends and colleagues, I pretty much got the blank stare of … what?

Or, more broadly, I’ve been watching StrawberryFrog's news mini-cooper-ization of Scion at scionspeaks.com:

"Scion owners design their own personal “coat of arms” online, a piece of owner-generated art that is meant to reflect their job, hobbies and — um, O.K. — karma.

In making their personalized crests, Scion owners can choose from among hundreds of symbols, all designed by a professional graffiti artist. The symbols range from an eagle, a jester, a king’s crown and a worker’s fist to Japanese anime-style flowers, a three-person family and a yin-yang circle. Customers can download their designs and have them made into window decals or take them to an auto airbrushing shop to have them professionally painted onto their cars." _NYTimes

Incredibly cool, right? But what will the adoption really be like?

And don't even get me started about last year's speculation Second Life.

The Oprah story is a great reminder to pause and think about what we should do as much as what we could do.

In the end, the rules of great online experience marketing are simple:

• Understand the objective: Why are we doing this?
• Know your audience: Care about what they care about
• Know your audience (again): Grow with or just barely ahead of their technology adoption
• Invest in content: If it’s not valuable to your audience, they won’t come back or pass it on

It should always be...

This EASY to use a press room:

The media room for Andy Beal's Radically Transparent offers enough content to power six news articles, four custom reviews, a buying decision and an ongoing relationship.

All in one place. All super easy to navigate.

This FUN to watch a branded video:

AKQA and Cake really fundamentally get it. It being social media and brands. You have to be able to take liberties - with yourself, your culture and your customers. You have to be able to delight and entertain and be completely different than a 30 second spot.

Little escapes the snark of this video from Pot Noodle. A piece that 200,000 people have already watched this month.

This PERSONAL to watch a recruitment video:

When Molly posted this video on Twitter, I had to ask her if it was sanctioned or organic ... the very simple delivery is so brimming with personality and conversation that I couldn't imagine it making it through any agency's self-marketing process.

But, somehow it did.

And, the simplicity of it - from an agency that COULD do anything - might just make it even more compelling.

This SIMPLE to share information:

Speaking of Twitter, I've been logged on for the past two days reading some of your favorite bloggers cover Ad Age's Digital Marketing summit in real time.

The posts include verbatims, analysis and a little argument. It's addictive.

This OPTIMISTIC to profile an audience:

After it sat for months on my teetering bedside stack of good intentions, I've finally picked up RenGen and dug in. Definitely my favorite industry book of this year... as much for its optimism as its smarts and illustrative examples.

Martin connects the dots from our creative and intellectual selves to a theory of renaissance that will define a generation.

ING Your Number

Now that your mortgage is worth bupkis, America's banks have shifted their acquisition strategy. Sure, it would be nice to have your checking account, but what they really want is the big dog: your retirement account. (Even if you haven't started one yet.) It's guaranteed growth income for them (and you), locked up for a couple of decades. Ideal.

I'm a fan of AIG's + campaign for its incredibly repeatable, conversation-starting voice and copy. And, of course, who doesn't get a kick out of the latest Nationwide Life Comes at You Fast episodic jaunt into rather clever and sunny nightmares. But, there's also something really engaging about this fundamentally simple campaign recently rolled out by ING and BBDO...

The spots feature people buzzing along in their daily lives - boarding planes, taking elevators, having lunch - all while toting a giant orange number. Most of the people are aspirational white collar professionals, but there's also a chef, a granddad, a car full of carefree young people. The numbers vary from several hundred thousand to a couple million and represent how much the person needs to save for retirement.

These are big numbers. And, frankly, all things equal, they would be reminiscent of that sick feeling you have in early April when you've been putting off your tax return because you don't know if you owe money, but fear that you might, and a lot, and just are not ready to face it... BUT, these ING spots overcome the fear factor with fun and friendly music and lots of positive motion. In the end, you get: I wonder what my number is. Not: Holy shit, I cannot do this.

The campaign drives to INGYourNumber.com. Which is a great example of why competitive audits work. ING took the best the competitive field had to offer, merged and elevated it, and added their own spin. The result is a site that has clearly learned from its neighbors.

Take a look. I think you'll see the simplicity of Fidelity's retirement planning tool; the personal delivery of Nationwide's; and a little twist on the call-to-action that is all ING.

In the end, the tool isn't a great fit for me. It rewards a customer who likes a high touch experience. And, I'm about as impatient as you would expect of someone for whom even Twittering is too much information. But, it's light and short and there are lots of helpful tricks for people just wading in - like a smart use of (looks like) Ajax to show help tips when a puzzled planner hovers on a question. All-in-all, probably a big win with the target.

Friday afternoon fun

A few things to lighten your afternoon... if the agency beer cart isn't quite enough.

An object lesson on why people don't trust advertising:

 

And, a few interesting projects from ad people who moonlight as real people:

• IADBIC: The Creative Director at Barefoot is the mastermind behind these wacky poems riffing on advertising. A little fine art meets our art. What was that quote that used to hang on my office wall ... something like welcome to our everyday struggle between capitalism and grace.

Steve's looking for submissions - so, grab your fountain pen and your issue of Ad Busters and get to it. Here's a little inspiration from his site:

"Where I will spread this couplet on spaceships and title it:
Flirt.
Taxi. Or
Atomic Burrito."

• Indexed: Copywriter turned comic Jessica Hagy recently published her first book of clever (sometimes zany) Venn diagrams. I just got the book in the mail - and, it's fab, but there's lots to enjoy on demand, too:
  • The Indexed Blog
  • Jessica guest blogging on Penguin Books
  • And, her Change This Venn manifesto

My faves:

AAA. Authentic storytelling makes a comeback.

Remember those long distance commercials from the 90s that left us with a lump in our throats?  The long-lost daughters calling home to dad. The couples reunited across seemingly uncrossable distances. The embarrassed TV watchers swiping tears from their cheeks?

Yeah, those ones.

What made them compelling was the story. The archetypes welling with happy emotion. The everyday hero stories that we all want to be a part of.

Jump ahead to 2008.

In an advertising environment of dropped calls, sweaty athletes and gloriously glossy hair follicles. AAA responds with their own everyday heroes; with compelling, authentic stories that we can all see ourselves in.

The campaign - from AAA Ohio and SBC Advertising - launched this month. It's told from the perspective of real tow truck drivers. But delivers something much larger: the story of their brand – literally, the true essence of service and membership – found in neighborhood driveways, in busy parking lots and in the cabs of tow trucks, with real people just talking about their jobs.

The result is great TV. Watch the spots here. But, don't blame me if you get a little teary on the Ant ones...

Why I love this approach:

AAA is up against two of the toughest challenges aging brands face: commoditization and sinking relevance.

People think: Oh, I already have this with my insurance or new car.

People think: My car won’t break down. I don’t need it.

Keeping ahead of the market, AAA aimed its operations and marketing strategies at refreshing the market perception of AAA.

Operations: Upgrade the ‘product’ we’re selling. People don’t have time to be towed. They want to be fixed and ‘stay on the go.’

Marketing: Anyone in any car can need AAA. The most common calls aren’t for breakdowns, they’re for keys locked in cars, dead batteries, flat tires, etc.

You can see the results in this campaign.

It shows that members are as likely to call for everyday goofs as real emergencies and demonstrates that most problems are fixed on the spot - no need to tow.

But, more than that, it brings to life a level of service and community that I hope will define the brand going forward.

Interactive Toolkit for Account Executives

Sometimes the most difficult part of the process is knowing where to start and how to add value.

Today's worksheet for AEs getting started in the interactive space details each of the major steps in the development process and easy ways to over-deliver and add real value at every step of the way.

Want more? Download yesterday's worksheet on the key components of a Web site with smart questions to ask even your toughest clients.

Interactive for AEs

As traditional agencies stretch farther and farther into the interactive space, long-time print, branding and broadcast AEs are being inundated with demands to basically speak a new language. They're at once floundering for the right answers -- heck, even the right question -- with clients and trying to deliver on the been-there-done-that demands of designers and programmers back at the agency.

Since I haven't yet run into a boot camp for teaching interactive to AEs, I thought I'd gather my notes and try to help:

Today: Overview of the key components of a basic site and smart questions to ask along the way

Tomorrow: Topline development process and ways for an AE to add value at each step

If you're just getting started selling & managing online (or remember when you were) and have questions or horror stories, please share them in the comments - together we can build other content and tools that might be needed ...