You’ve probably all been in that dead-end social media pitch. The one where you have a perfect audience and an authentic story, but your client heads down one of three painful directions:
The Social Kids Table: (Or the Intern Factor.) Assuming social is just for (irrelevant) kids, they offload the brand voice to the nearest 20-something and hope for the best
The Slow Lane: The mere mention of social starts the weaving of a bureaucratic Web. Mediation, distrust, individual approvals. How can we protect ourselves from the people who want to engage with us?
The Soapbox: Prepping for command and control. Spewing content into the vast social underbrush. Comments locked down. Brand Invincible.
It’s enough to convince you that social can’t succeed with an average business. That – as the blogging boys say – your brand can never be my friend.
But just when you’re about to give up: A completely unlikely brand throws itself entirely into social and comes out smarter and more authentic for it.
Writing about Plaid's quest the other day made me think about the changing ways agencies are engaging potential clients, partners and employees. Increasingly, they're not settling for create-and-wait tactics, rather they're engaging best-fit audiences with can't-resist content and experiences.
Today's agency marketing is LESS like:
Spray-and-pray mailers
Dialing for dollars against generic lists of "creative decision makers"
Pulpit positions at preaching-to-the-choir conferences
If-you-build-it-they-will-come agency Web sites
It's MORE like:
Creating opportunities to share ideas
Spending time with like minds
Building value around content
Making the Web a personal experience
In our fast-moving, client-driven world, agency leaders are investing time and resources in changing the playing field. The results are ... pretty desirable. Check out these two examples.
Space150: Rip up your white paper, host an event
Thought leadership used to come in a 15-page white paper, complete with charming 12-point type and the occasional bar graph. Today, it comes in shared time and ideas. Agencies leveraging their partners and networks to create immersive events on topics clients are actually interested in.
Cole & Weber: Create deep dive industry experiences
Industry relevance was once a column of client logos. Today, it's a sense of the experience. Of speaking the language, having apropos theories, demonstrating a targeted approach.
Cole & Weber brings a great example to life on this micro site showcasing their experience in the wine category. It's peppered with thought leadership. Has a taste of quality, a note of investment and a nose of confidence. (Metaphor - and post - officially exhausted).
We are - in a word - overwhelmed by choice. So much to read
and do and participate in. A lot of it clever and intriguing and really
kind of delightful. To get your message heard, to get past our savvy
consumer filters, you need a special kind of engagement - the kind that
breaks through.
In this series, I'll share examples of brands that have broken through and show how they used the principles of social to do it.
What they were up against: Like most cities that never have red
carpet events or celebrity homes to happen by, Asheville has an
awareness challenge. How do they make sure vacation planners everywhere
know how much great stuff they have to offer?
For years, Asheville went about tourism advertising in the usual way -
visit Asheville for X, Y and Z. Calls trickled in. Weekend vacations
were had. But, Asheville wanted something more - longer vacations, more
interest, higher engagement.
So they challenged a number of agencies - including Luckie - to come up with the idea that would help them break through.
What they did: Luckie knew that it was going to take more
than bucolic photography of green mountains and the promise of a ride
on the rapids to put Asheville on the map. So they looked for an angle
that would get people talking about something people are naturally
passionate about: getting a break from their demanding worklife.
The pitch & the eventual campaign was called Friends of the Five Day Weekend. And it was a call to stop working longer and harder. It was time to take leisure back.
Through newspaper ads, posters, sandwich boards, TV spots, and radio
ads, Luckie drove the curious and overworked to learn more on a Web
site, sign petitions of support and even attend rallies in key cities.
What happened next: 7000 people signed an online petition that was sent on to Congress and the presidential primary contenders. Hundreds joined homegrown Five Day Weekend groups on Facebook. Average people bought and wore the brand. They not only attended the planned rallies, but some even set up their own rally.
Hundreds of bloggers - including the feisty Donald - blogged. And - even with no concentrated media outreach effort -
Michael Medved invited the campaign spokesman on for a lengthy debate
about the economics of the issue. Fox News did a national piece on
it, focusing on overwork but also interviewing the head of Asheville
tourism. And, the AP ran with it.
Importantly, the story of Asheville came through. Not only as
the transparent sponsor of the "movement," but also as a place where
people do care about the very real issue of work-life balance.
How it's social: This campaign has literal social elements -
like the Facebook groups, blogging, etc. But its success is arguably
built on the solid social principles of what makes WOM happen. To
borrow from Steve Knox, CEO of Tremor,
it was a story that was
true to the core of the brand and disruptive to the conversation. The
kind of social marketing that creates results, not just impressions. It
was something that people could care about and it was easy for them to pass on.
Let's get physical for a moment, ad friends, with a couple of great examples of local marketing done right. Starting with agency work and wandering the whole way down to a homemade, hand-stuffed message from a local restaurant:
First up: The Women's Fund of Central Ohio Keyholder Event
This annual fundraiser supports grants to programs that promise social change for women and girls. Every year, they feature a well-known speaker. This year, it's Miriam Peskowitz, author of The Daring Book for Girls.
The invitation and Web site were created by Ologie (long before I arrived!) and - I think - powerfully bring to life the book, the theme and the cause. The pieces feel very high end for local greater good and have been received with something akin to delight.
AND- The Web site (again for a local market event) has been nominated for a Webby. Vote for it under Living / Events on the People's Voice.
Onto: The Makeup Counter at Nordstom
Talk about making a big brand personal! Nordstrom has always been known for service, but sometimes they outdo even themselves.
Recently, I went to the Laura Mercier counter to get a fab new lip gloss (seriously, baby doll gloss, you've got to have it) and was helped by a perfectly gracious associate.
Then, the following week, I got this hand-written note from her - thanking me for the purchase. That's a business card I was careful to save.
Finally: Figlio Restaurant in Grandview / Columbus
We've talked a lot lately about brands leveraging Twitter to listen to users - to find small problems before they get big; to uncover ideas that might make better products.
Peter and Laurie Danis, owners of Figlio, have perfected the old-school version of that.
They have a great personal story about tossing their law practices for the love of food. For caring about work with passion. So, they scan the local newspaper's career section every week. And, target people who've recently been promoted with a great little congratulations package:
A letter about your accomplishment. Their story. And a gift certificate for dinner. All asking that you share your celebration with them.
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
Recent Comments