Vanity vs. Blog

Came across an interesting post by Suzanne Vara, Managing Partner at Kherize5, titled “Is Vanity Killing Your Blog?“  It’s good… go read it.  I’ll wait.

The point about the pressure to constantly strive for more, create fresh new content, put forth more “conversation and connecting” into the WWW is incredibly timely.  Essentially, with all this talking, who is listening?

We all have been taught that the way to be the most interesting person at the party is to be the most interested (in others, the host, the food, etc.), which means asking questions and enabling the next logical and engaging comments from the other person (in other words, basic etiquette).  Gut check:  Does this type of etiquette happen on your blog?  On your Facebook fan page?  In your Twitter stream?  Hmmmm…

Twitter Comments

Evian Roller Babies

With a tagline live young, the Evian web site continues to reflect its brand of fresh snowy French Alps mountain water.  “Water is essential to life.  It’s a fundamental element to your health and well-being,” says Evian, and to me, the pictures of beautiful mountains and beautiful people reinforce this message.  Cool, soothing, blue, and icy whites just scream health and freshness.

Which is why I’m also surprised by the “Fun Stuff” tab on their site.  Here you can use your cursor as a finger to draw on an icy, fogged over window, to create your specially designed snowflake storms, or to drag-and-drop a “skier” on the slopes and watch him ski down.  Is this video (or any of these tactics for that matter) ON BRAND?   Let me know what you think…

Twitter Comments

Coca-Cola KNOWS It’s Brand

Happiness is contagious, and that “contagious” quality is where marketing meets the market.  Not only does the Coca-Cola brand have a “lock” on happiness (after all, what other beverage can claim branding rights to Christmas?), Coca-Cola’s latest video, The Happiness Machine, is a perfect example of how viral happiness can be.

The brand’s first viral venture captures what happened when they placed a very special vending machine on a college campus.  The video launched on January 12 and topped a million views yesterday based solely on people sharing the video through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and word-of-mouth.  The people in the video and people spreading the video will forever share a memory that cements the association of happiness with Coca-Cola.

I know I have great memories of Coca-Cola from when I was a kid at my grandparents’ house… it was all they every drank (Sorry, Pepsi).  I remember so clearly the hot Texas summers, and then, in the midst of the sweaty afternoon, there was a silver tray with ice-cold bottles of Coke and silver mint julep cups.  My mouth still waters as I evoke the memory.

How can marketers create these special moments… this magic?  And not just “viral video” magic, but that everyday life magic of the emotional connection that bonds people with your brand.  Can we conceive of the complete story and lead people down a path of creating smiles?  When you strategize on the reach of your marketing campaigns, do you think about the object, service, or experience in a way that creates an effect well over the horizon?  As marketers, that is our challenge and mission.

Coca-Cola’s new video…  The Happiness Machine

Twitter Comments

Blogging and Your Brand

Let’s say that your company is brand new.  Or is launching a brand new product and you feel the need for an alternative web presence to your company’s main site.  What is the FIRST STEP you should take in today’s Web 2.0 world?  Establish a Corporate Blog.  Here are the steps:

1.  Build a platform: Define your company purpose.  Be able to convey to the world your brand and your message.

2.  Design: Create a look and feel that matches your theme/message.  Why use a Wordpress (or Joomla, or Drupal) CMS theme, instead of just a .Blogspot.com blog?  Two reasons:  1.) SEO  2.) First impressions.  You may say, “Why not start on a free .typepad or .blogspot blog and move to a more expensive theme when the blog takes off?  Think about the number of visitors needed to create a successful blog.  Now, think about those visitors as potential customers.  Like the shopping mall on Rodeo Drive vs. a small town flea market, you want visitors to see an impressively designed structure.  If your blog looks like a flea market, how many customers will turn around and walk out?  Not only will they be turned off by the appearance of your “mall,” but they’ll also go and tell their colleagues that your mall stinks.  Those potential customers will have an impression of your mall, without ever having stepped foot inside it.  So, you’re already down levels of influence with a snowball’s chance of getting any of them back.  Instead of wasting time trying to chase customers, why not wow them right out of the gate?

3.  Branding: It isn’t just your logo, or a banner on your blog.  It’s the font you use, the graphics, the color of your background, the texture, the look and feel of your platform.  You want a narrow niche and to use content to drill that image into the minds of your readers.  Everything that you write about on your company’s blog should relate to the business, your industry, your products/services, your upcoming events, product roll-outs, promotions, campaigns, “did you know?” factoids, etc.

4.  Building a Tribe: Just as having a mall doesn’t guarantee an income, having a blog doesn’t insure a stream of money flowing into your corporate coffers.  So, how do you get people to not only visit your store, but to hang out, grab a coffee and make it their second home (so to speak)?  The trick is not in convincing people to come over, but in recruiting them to your “cause.”  Your point of view, the information you provide, the connections and conversations you start… these things build a tribe around your corporate blog.  So, what are the steps to building a tribe that will consume every piece of content that you create, and share the crumbs with their like-minded friends?   Three steps:  become entrenched; engage; give it all away

5. Become Entrenched: The road to becoming respect in any niche starts with possessing that which is essential to being an authority… knowledge.  With knowledge comes both the understanding of how to speak to the people within that niche, and the variety of opinions that are required to create compelling and insightful commentary.

6.  Engage: Engaging, not only with your community niche, but with those outside of your own, is the first key to building your small army.  It isn’t just answering comments and replying to emails.  It isn’t just ReTweeting and replying on Twitter in hope of getting reciprocal backlinks.  It requires a full-time dedicated person to give the time and energy that many bloggers aren’t willing to give.

7.  Give it All Away: Not a single blogger can/will begin their career by monetizing immediately.  Building trust and authority takes time, and it isn’t something that you can do easily unless you are willing to put in the work.  You don’t have to post every single day, but sticking to a consistent editorial schedule will help your audience know what to expect.  As long as you’re giving away content, you will be continuously building a bigger audience, which means that monetization options will increase.  Consider giving away the why… and selling the how.  That’s what we do here at Wendistry.

8.  End Benefits: No… it’s not monetization.  Your corporate blog functions as a platform that builds your company’s brand.  It is this brand, over time, that will allow you to earn money behind the scenes.

Tiger Woods and Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair magazine couldn’t have predicted how their February 2010 cover would fly off the shelves… due to a shirtless photo of Tiger Woods by Annie Leibovitz.  So, the question for today is how deeply do Personal Brands affect Corporate Brands?

To quote Vanity Fair’s Buzz Binnsinger, “In an age of constant gotcha and exposure, Tiger had always been the bionic man in terms of personality, controlling to a fault and controlled to a fault, smiling with humility and showing those pearly white teeth in victory or defeat.  In the world of pro golf, even fellow pros and other insiders didn’t really know him, because he didn’t want anybody to know him.”

“Some pro golfers, such as Phil Mickelson, wear their hearts on their sleeves during press conferences.  Mickelson could talk candidly about his game and the impact of his wife’s having breast cancer.  He could also be snarky and pissy.  Never Tiger.”

“Tiger learned very well to talk forever and say nothing,” says Joe Logan, a co-founder of a web site called MyPhillyGolf.com, which covers the game both nationally and in the Philadelphia region.  For Woods, Logan remembers, an emotional response to a flawless round was “I had a pretty good day.”  He never got rude or rattled.  He never got irritated with a stupid question, in large part because he knew that the camera was always on him.

So, if he was unknowable to the writers who covered him, he was equally unknowable to virtually all the other golfers on the tour.  Early on, he had learned that one of the rules of pro golf is to conform, a commandment only heightened in his case by his being black in a white man’s game.  What is clear now, however, is that he lived a very abnormal life all his life in a sport in which guys are very conventional, and if you are not conventional you get ostracized right away.  Whatever demons lurked within, he kept them well hidden.  I think too well hidden.

So, once Tiger returns to golf, which most think he will, he’ll simply be another player trying to win a tournament… Not the $100 million a year super-endorser.  What about Nike and their “wait and see” approach?  Nike took this approach when Kobe Bryant endured consequences for his extramarital affair in 2003-04. Kobe Bryant’s situation was more severe, as criminal charges were filed. Eventually, charges were dropped. At that point, Nike and Kobe Bryant resumed their relationship.

However, in the case of basketball, Nike has plenty of other celebrity endorsers.  And, for some reason, the general public seems to accept (and sometimes even assume) that basketball players will not be monogamous… almost like it’s a part of the “street cred.”  However, Nike Golf has been built around Tiger Woods.  There is no other since Jack Nicklaus that has been the clear golf brand leader like Tiger.  Even though Nike Golf’s branding activities with Tiger have been focused on Tiger’s golfing abilities, not his personal life, my question is:  Will his actions tarnish the brand?

What do you think?

Original post January 20, 2010 @ 13:54pm

January 23, 08:50am, LATEST UPDATE:

So, by now those of us who travel for business in and out of Dallas/Ft. Worth International airport have seen the latest and greatest Accenture… elephants and frogs??!!??!!  Who in the world thought this was a brilliant creative idea?  Doesn’t jungle animals just scream “High Performance. Delivered.” to you?

Yeah, I understand all Tiger’s crap came out hard and fast, so I can just imagine the scene of dozens of Creative Directors in a room desperately scribbling on notepads.  Suddenly one of them shouts, “I’ve got it!… Everybody loves animals!”

So now when you now rush past these innovative displayed of marketing creativity in airports nationally by February 1st, let me know if they make you stop, stare, and think, “Man, I really need some consulting!”

Top 10 Marketing Must Dos

Here are ten essentials of marketing for the next 100 years to ensure that this industry continues to thrive and contribute to the growth of the U.S. economy.

1.  Become increasingly targeted, focused, and personal: The future is a world in which consumers receive only messages that interest them… and only when they are receptive to these messages.  However, marketing goes beyond just communicating with customers.  It encompasses the entire process of customer relationship management… attracting, retaining and growing long-term loyalty.

2.  Build real, tangible and enduring brand value: Fundamentally, marketing is about building brands and brand value.  As an industry, marketing must focus on taking strong brands and making them stronger; taking brands that have lost their way and restoring them to prominence; and building new, powerful brand that meet the emerging consumer needs of tomorrow.

3.  Become increasingly effective, more creative, insightful and accountable: Marketing effectiveness depends on smart consumer insights that are meaningful, actionable and predictive.  Effective marketing also requires great creative, driven by these consumer insights.  Effective marketing must be reliably and consistently accountable, informing us about how well we are building brands and growing business.

4.  Become more integrated and proficient in managing expanding media platforms: Marketing must be seamlessly integrated across all media and marketing functions.  Integrated marketing, however, continues to be talked about more than actually implemented.  Marketers must strategically approach decisions and media choices in a completely agnostic fashion.  Every marketing resource must seamlessly work to build brands and grow businesses.

5.  Supply chain must become more efficient and productive: Marketing efficiency enables us to shorten the supply chain, reduce waste and improve productivity.  Ad-ID is the foundation of digital workflow throughout the marketing process.  It will improve the accuracy of reporting and evaluation of advertising assets, affording process improvements and cost savings for everyone.

6.  Ecosystem- including agencies, media, and suppliers- must become increasingly capable: Today’s marketing ecosystem comprises a complex, interconnected community of advertising agencies, media organizations, research firms, production companies and other resources that support marketers’ needs to build brands and expand market share.  Marketers need these partners to continuously create new ideas and competencies.

7.  Professionals must become better, highly skilled, diverse leaders: As we prepare for the future, we must cultivate the talents, skills and continuous development of marketing professionals.  We must also embrace diversity, a vitally important factor in reaching and influencing culturally different consumers.  Diversity contributes to a more inspiring and creative environment… one that grows companies for a lifetime.

8.  Be indisputably socially responsible: Consumers must have trust that the companies they choose to do business with respect their personal values and are sensitive to larger societal issues.  As an industry, we must continue to commit resources to socially responsible endeavors.  The future of marketing depends upon us behaving and acting in the best interests of society.

9.  Be unencumbered by inappropriate legislation or regulation: We must protect marketing’s First Amendment rights, even with regard to controversial products.  We must also vigorously work to defeat proposals for taxes on advertising and efforts to alter its 100% tax deductible status.  Finally, we must continuously strengthen our exemplary record of self-regulation.

10.  The Marketing discipline must be elevated and respected: We must continually underscore the fact that, nationally, marketing generates over $5 trillion in economic activity, or about 20% of total U.S. economic activity.  Sales of products and services stimulated by advertising support 15% of the jobs in the country.  Building respect for marketing’s economic impact will help attract the best and the brightest to our profession.

by Bob Liodice, President & CEO, ANA (Association of National Advertisers)

Dockers MANifesto

Dockers… Wear the Pants.  Doesn’t that just say it all?

According to its Facebook fan page:   “You’re not a bloke, not a fellow, chap, dude, cat, gent, or bro-ham. Face it, you are a man.”

Now, for all the completely over-the-edge feminists out there, I’m offering a contrarian opinion by Adiocracy.com who’s brand is, “Come across a piece of advertising that’s particularly inane or brilliant? We want to see it.”

Wendistry’s opinion, however, is that 2010 is the year of the man-backlash.  I truly believe that most guys (read:  middle of the road America, just-trying-to-make-a-living-and-do-the-right-thing) are sick to death of not knowing their place in the world any more.

Do they hold the door open for women any more?  Do they stand at the table pull out chairs for women?  Do they pick up things women have accidentally dropped?

As a woman, who likes her door held open, please, I really feel for men and I admire Dockers to staking a claim on an idea that I think will resonate and grow for them.  For those men out there who like the new Dockers brand position, here’s where to get more:  Art of Manliness

The original article above was posted on January 5, 2010.  Here is a January 24, 2010 update:

Sitting here watching the NFC Championship game, Saints vs. Vikings, and man-oh-man… a Dodge Charger commercial.  It’s “crafts-MAN-ship” and I’m feeling a manwagon coming on.  What do we think, now?

Twitter Comments

COMING SOON: Wendistry Brand Web Site Re-Launch

So, yes, I’ve been in the advisory business for almost 20 years now.  Why in the world am I attempting to re-launch Wendistry?  In a word… passion.

I have always been a “marketer with a message,” but now my passion has grown to expose the beautiful and meaningful things that Enrich, Enlighten, Educate, and Entertain us.

We all know beautiful, well-designed things when we see them, and we all want them.  But, WHY do we desire them so?  What is the marketing alchemy behind the most engaging products and brands?

Yes, this new forum will host my opinions…

Yes, I welcome disagreement and discussion…

And, yes, “I am a (wo)man of simple tastes, easily satisfied with the best.” Winston Churchill as quoted by Wendi R W McGowan

Antithesis Advertising

With a $100M advertising campaign, the Verizon Droid will be hard to avoid.  However, I’m led to wonder… does marketing the antithesis (in this case, the iPhone) REALLY help you establish market leadership?  In other words, can you really build a brand on whining, “Yea, me too… but better!”?

In a blanket push you won’t be able to escape, the integrated campaign is the largest in Verizon history with most of the money spent by the end of this year.  (I can hear the Christmas cash registers now)  The TV spots that have just started are as far from the iPhone’s happy, shiny ads as possible.  Testosterone-heavy and graphically grim, according to Advertising Age’s Rita Chang, “they could be mistaken for Terminator ads.”  And, the tagline?  “In a world of doesn’t, Droid does.”  (Am I the only one scratching my head, huh???)

Although Verizon dropped its earlier direct attacks on the iPhone, this new campaign pokes at the Apple culture itself saying, “swap semi-functional, giggling-brat-vanity for a bare knuckle bucket of does.”   Time will tell, but Wendistry’s prediction is that, by attempting to brand a 2nd something by defining what the 1st something isn’t only reinforces the 1st something in the consumer’s mind.  In a nutshell, iPhone killer?  Hmmm… iPhone defender might be more like it.

In the 25 Seconds…

… it takes you to read this:

• 660 people will send a Tweet.  655 of them will bore you to death.
• 520 people will post a picture on Facebook.  Not bad, but 20,313 more will doe the same on Qzone.
• 124 teenagers will serve detention for texting in class.  (and text about it during detention)
• 23 marketers will learn what SOL means in terms of their digital plans.

Reputation lost:  Perhaps one of the most tangible illustrations can be seen in the emergence of search as a discipline within public relations.  Today, having search strategists as part of the core client team to develop reputation management strategies are essential.  With this unique expertise, a holistic view of search results can help to inform the overall strategy for managing reputations, both offline and on.

Next Page »