Bob Rinderle / Business & Beyond

Steve Jobs

The passing of Steve Jobs puts into sharp relief the difference between producers and pontificators.  Let's have less of the latter.

Interactive Marketing Leads Brand Building

Nate Elliott of Forrester recently published the following reasons why interactive marketing is poised to lead brand campaigns and customer engagement:

1. The Internet has the scale to match any other channel. 83% of American adults are now online (compared to 96% who watch TV), and online users spend marginally more time online each week than they spend watching TV. In total, I estimate that for every hour the average American spent watching TV in 2010, they spent about .9 hours online. I expect that when we get our 2011 survey data back, the channels will be neck-and-neck.
2. The Internet has the depth to beat any other channel. Marketers no longer have to limit themselves to the quick brand impressions made by TV spots or billboards; their websites offer them all the depth they need to convey complex brand attributes and engage users. And consumers actually want brands to offer them this depth online – it’s why so many users go straight to Google to learn more about the brands they see advertised offline, and why the Internet is consumers’ most trusted source of brand and product information.
3. The Internet is more trusted than any other channel. What’s the marketing channel customers trust most? It’s not your TV ads, your print ads, your direct mail or even your Facebook page – it’s your own web site.
4. The Internet is a richer storytelling medium than any other channel. I love TV’s ability to tell a story – it’s the reason we still remember classic ads and taglines, and the reason I’ve dedicated much of my career to developing online video ad formats. But online goes a step further than TV, adding interactivity to the picture and offering marketers their single most compelling creative channel.

Volvo For Life

Volvo isn't kidding when they use this line in their ads. Always known for their safety, Volvos just don't quit. 

My 13-year old V70 wagon rolled past 260,000 miles today. 

I love this car.

   
 

Stop Gap Measures

Well, that didn't take long. Just months after Gap's widely publicized logo miscue, the company has overhauled its marketing and design functions. North American President Marka Hansen, and Ivy Ross, Gap's VP Global Marketing, are both gone, as is long-time agency Laird + Partners.

   
 As MarketingWeek reports:

"The Gap branding team had no idea what they were dealing with in terms of intellectual property. They didn’t recognize what currency the original Gap logo had with consumers and how strongly they felt about it. Nor did they understand how to deal with the dilemma in a multi-channel and vocal media culture."

Does Social Media Sell?

"While digital channels and online interactions offer a plethora of data points, they don't come with a set playbook for assigning value. Marketers have grown comfortable with formulas like gross ratings points and frequency, time-tested formulas for building brands in traditional media. Yet with social media, what's a Facebook friend worth?" asks Brian Morrissey in Adweek.
 
Pepsi went big in social with Refresh Everything, a program that directs $20 million to charities.  As Morrissey reported, the program was appealing to Pepsi executives because it rested on four big trends: crowdsourcing, doing good, sharing and transparency.

"Our goal is to skate to the center of culture," says Bonin Bough, PepsiCo's director of social media. "Right now, digital is culture."

Many believe the future for brands is to do well by doing good - made famous, in part, by Google's "don't be evil" mantra.  I'm all for corporate responsibility, but when it comes to philanthropic marketing, there is a point at which brand elasticity snaps.  I'm curious to see how far Pepsi's messaging can move into social activism before the critical brand experience - the reason why the physical product exists - eventually gets lost.  Interestingly, another beverage, Coors Light, reversed years of sales declines by recommitting to a product-based message grounded in Rocky Mountain cold refreshment.

It is tricky to get the marketing mix and messaging mix in proper balance; I am interested to see how Pepsi's moves play out. 

Social Media Engagement Opps

Nice snapshot of social media engagement opportunities.
 

Energized Differentiation

A great article in strategy + business claims that since 2004, key measures of brand value including consumer awareness, trust, and admiration are all down significantly for thousands of brands across a wide swath of industries including CPG, services, airlines, automobiles, beverages, retailers, etc.

"The majority of brands seemed to be stalled in the consumer marketplace," stated the article.  "For leaders of consumer-related corporations, the mismatch (between the value that consumers see in brands and the value that Wall Street assigns) points to a serious, continuing problem in brand management."

 

Brands that do resonate with consumers, however, "communicate excitement, dynamism, and creativity in ways that the vast majority of brands do not."  The authors call this "energized differentiation," and claim that in a world of excess capacity and diminishing trust, creating these kinds of energy-infused brands can help companies invigorate their brand management practices. 

 

And what better place to create "energized differentiation" than the myriad digital touchpoints available today.  Digital, and everything it represents from consumer empowerment to personalization and specialization, to on-demand, and portable IDs, etc. is the future of brand management and brand value. 

Transitioning from Offline to Online

This eMarketer chart reinforces a key challenge that confronts clients (and agencies); that there exists a very distinct reality in approaching online versus offline marketing.

The opportunities for agencies lie in two key areas.  The first is the 39% of marketers who lack Internet skills or seek greater transparency of skills.

The second, and possibly more fruitful opportunity, lies in the perception among 36% of respondents that a change is required in a brand's positioning and product/service when moving online.

Messaging may be different, and the assets used to promote a brand may vary, but the inherent value of a product - its core essence and positioning - should never change medium to medium.  

Marketing on the Internet takes work; there are myriad touchpoints and engagement opportunities, and the messaging can be owned and transformed by communities and highly empowered individuals.  But as social networks explode in importance and portable social IDs transform the relationship between brand and consumer, gaining expertise in how to market online is absolutely critical. 

Tale of Two Brands: Heinz, Domino's

Heinz is receiving great publicity on YouTube from iJustine.  Who is she?  She is Justine Ezarik, a 25-year-old media empire with a large and popular YouTube channel, blog, and Twitter following.

Back home in Pittsburgh, Justine is expressing her passion for Heinz ketchup and asking for inside access to visit the company.  Also famous for being a big Apple addict, Justine is the positive side of online consumer brand engagement.

Contrast that with the PR issue facing Domino's, stemming from the videotaped abuse of their product by two employees - also posted to YouTube (which follows by mere months the KFC incident where three employees bathed in a sink and posted the photos online), and you have very vivid, current examples of the good and evil that can come from consumer generated content.

What Is The Value Of Engagement?

Advertising works.  There certainly are inefficiencies and people can debate ROI.  But as evidenced by Hulu.com, broadcast ads still work - the brand's Super Bowl ads helped drive a 33% increase in site traffic following The Big Game.

If ads (online and off) and other marketing inputs are effective to varying degrees, what is the value of Engagement? 

Forrester synthesizes Engagement into four I's: Involvement; Interaction; Intimacy; and Influence.  And Dan Neely (CEO of Networked Insights) does a nice job in this graphic of suggesting the exponential value gained from actionable insights.  Obviously there is great value in understanding, and interacting with, key brand influencers.

But how does understanding that value influence dollar allocations when determining the marketing mix?   Is Engagement best realized on a (digital) content-specific level?  On a cross-channel campaign level?  Or at the brand level?  What is the economic value, for instance, of reaching 12,000 highly engaged brand advocates online versus reaching 12 million, possibly passive, people via TV?  I'm part of a team at my company currently working through this discussion.  Feel free to contribute comments.