When too much is too much…
We’re living online more than ever these days. I won’t bore you with statistics, but keeping your inbox and text threads under control is a bigger hassle today than it was 3 months ago.
We don’t need any more hassles, do we? Seriously, if a clown asked me to go into the woods with him right now, I’d just nod my head and follow.
Many companies who use email and texts to connect with us are not helping. They are hurting their brand.
Please, for the love of God, stop and think to yourself, “Is my system helping my customers or creating hassles for folks that are already dealing with enough frustration to launch a rocket?”
Here are some rules to rework your digital comms strategy to reduce frustration.
Less is more.
Switching from email to messaging channels to complete one transaction is a big hassle.
One thing at a time. Don’t send marketing emails until after a transaction is complete. No one wants a bunch of happy-ass marketing lingo when they’re trying to schedule an appointment, make a payment, or arranged delivery.
Don’t assume that I want to join your club, community, or group because I sent you an email or text requesting information.
Why would you automatically create an account on your platform if I used Facebook or Google to log in and send me emails about it? That’s just annoying.
Be consistent, no one wants 6 emails about the same issue from 6 different people.
Focus on personalization from both a content and a technology content perspective.
Follow-up with queries in a timely manner, solve the problem, and stop sending emails. Solving an issue is not an invitation to start marketing to folks, it’s just not.
If a customer requests you to take an account down, don’t send an email with instructions on how to remove the account from your platform. We don’t work for you, take the account down yourself if the customer has requested you to.
If I didn’t take the survey the first time, don’t send me another email asking me to take the survey.
Pick up the phone and call them.
Think about what you’re doing.
Comfort Food Marketing
These days we’re all concerned with two things; the state of our health and finances. Well, maybe three things, when are the kids going back to school? All jokes aside its a challenging time to market. Budgets are frozen, supply chains disrupted and consumer consumption patterns are shifting. Essential items are relegating luxury items to wish lists as we continue to hoard toilet paper. A baffling practice born of fear.
But fear not, we can still market, and now is the time to sow the seeds for long term relationships. After all, are we all not craving a little assurance that everything will be all right and we’ll get through this together? Relationship marketing has never had a better stage to work from than the COVID-19 pandemic. So here a few ideas to keep you in front of your audience.
Write once, share often: Marketing teams that relied on quarterly webinars to inform and learn from target buyers are finding attendance numbers down. It’s no surprise when folks who are juggling work, schooling kids, and managing the home will find it hard to fit you into a defined date and time to attend. But they have time to read. So send them articles and stories about your shared market and industry. Lay off the hard sell and focus on entertaining and educating them. Create stories they want to read rather than something they feel have to read. You want them to look forward to your next email and content. For example, brands such as Sports Basement share customer’s stories of joy and inspiration via email to members. The stories are not price and product-focused, they’re aspirational.
Engage rather than sell: Silca, a high-end road bike equipment manufacturer is leveraging gamification via social media and email to engage with consumers. The more often your audience engages with you the longer the relationship will last. Silca has run and re-run this promotion because it is working. That’s right, bingo works.
Be empathetic: Find ways to communicate with your audience that lets them know you understand what they are going through. I have a small group of friends that I call every day or so at the same time. It’s not a scheduled activity on a calendar, no Zoom required, and not every day do we talk. But there is comfort in knowing that in the late afternoon some or all of us will begin to touch base with each other. This loosely structured gab-fest is an opportunity to listen to others, share feelings, and find some comfort from the constraints of our daily lives. But it also sends a strong message, you matter and I called to see how you are. Is this not the essence of any long term relationship?
Eventually, and despite our elected leader’s worst efforts, the economy will come back, businesses will re-open. Life will be different and somehow the same. Marketing will still be a challenge, but it will be easier to re-enter this brave new world with strong relationships in place.
Out of the Trenches
After years of slogging away in the PR trenches, I came to a startling conclusion. All the press in the world simply won’t reach enough of the target audience to push the needle forward for brands. Today the media platform is so vast, with so much content appearing hourly, that breaking through to enough readers to create awareness and elicit the proper response is beyond the call of duty for a well-crafted news article.
That is not to say that well-crafted news articles do not have their purpose and place in creating brand awareness. Earned media still creates unparalleled credibility with readers. It means the expectations of brand marketers won’t be met with PR alone. Today brand marketers have one key measuring stick- how much traffic did this story drive to my website. Yes, the number of articles in appropriate publications and the quality of message coherence across these publications are still important, but irrelevant to the brand marketer if it doesn’t spike website traffic.
So, PR practitioners are charged with getting a hyperlink established in each article we place to allow for ‘backlinking’ from the article to the brand’s website. Still, it’s not enough, simply because not everyone in the target audience is reading that publication. You cannot assume any different. So how do you leverage PR to drive traffic to a brand’s website without losing the credibility of earned media
The answer is to integrate with digital marketing. This approach broadens to the scope of how and where the story can be told, reaches the target audience on social media and other channels when they are not necessarily seeking news. Digital and social marketing can carry the credibility of your earned media article beyond the readership of the original publication.
Driving your message across social media while pitching and placing media stories extends the articles to a new group of target audiences, allows you to judge the effectiveness of an article while carrying key messages. It also creates brand awareness among the journalists you are trying to reach. Of course, not all brands and situations are right for this approach, but overall linking the two disciplines will provide better results and move PR out of the trenches and in front of more of the target audience.
What Story Can Do for Your Brand
Whether your brand is a B2B or B2C business, your customers have choices. So how do you begin the process of convincing them to choose your brand over your competitors? The answer is simple. You tell your story, and you tell it effectively, generously and consistently to the right audience (customer set) at the right time.
Here in the Silicon Valley I’ve run into many engineering focused companies who think because their product is currently superior to others on the market, and they have spent 10 years and millions of dollars developing it, they don’t need to tell their story to their customer set. After all, their sales force has been interacting with their customer base for years. This thinking takes you out of the competition. No matter how superior your product is, your customers still have choices, and they have to trust your brand in order to trust your now superior product. So, again we go back to the original question, how do you convince them to choose your product? (See the last sentence of the first paragraph.)
Your customers and the new ones you wish to attract will make an emotional connection to your brand through story. All the data, spec sheets, feature sets and power point presentations your sales team can generate will not do this unless it is part of a well-crafted story told in different ways across various media.
Here is what story will do for your brand, product and sales team:
Increase engagement with your target audience, key customers and new targets. You will gain deeper insights into their business, buying cycles, needs and goals.
Build affinity, community and loyalty. Is it not easier to sell to those who already trust your brand and talk about it? Show me a sales person who doesn’t want this environment to sell in and I will buy you lunch.
Create competitive advantage. If your customers have a choice, story gives you an edge on the competition by engaging with them before your salesperson calls. Your target customer will have a positive perception of your brand and most likely questions that can lead to a meaningful sales dialogue.
Differentiate your company from others. Story allows you to position yourself before others do. It allows for unique and defensible positioning that you control. How long do you think you will last if you let your competitors control your story?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, half of B2C and B2B marketers planned to increase spending on content in 2017, with blogs and videos as the most popular format. So we can assume that your competitors are ramping up their brand storytelling engine, shouldn’t you be as well?
To read more about the technology that will enable you to share your brand story, visit https://brandcomgroup.tradepub.com and download Tech That Enables Storytelling from Brightspot.
After the gold rush....
Where does Public Relations fit into the gold rush of our data-driven, customer experience marketing universe?
Not so long ago the Silicon Valley discovered that data, when stored, managed and crunched in real-time provides a wealth of information that can transform markets, scale businesses and solve complex problems that often improve our lives. The gold rush was on. But many companies have lost track of the need for a brand story to build relationships with users. Today we all have heard the stories about the California gold rush, those who left the east to chase the riches, the Jewish immigrant who built a clothing empire, and the intrigue of the Barbary Coast, but who actually knows how much gold was mined?
At its very best, data reveals truths and provides insights to create a wealth of knowledge. What data doesn't do is connect with humans on an emotional level to create relationships based on positive experiences. It's the sharing of those experiences via a story that allows a brand to grow. After all, if all that was required was more data, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.
If you are an automotive buff who likes to drive fast at some point you heard about the ultimate driving machine from a story. You learned that BMW’s can reach 130 miles an hour on the race track. The 130 mph is the data, the experience of driving with confidence, trust and thrill like a race car driver is what binds you to the BMW brand. Let's say the data changes and the car can now speed to 150 mph, or worse, drops to a mere 120 mph, the BMW brand story will keep the user engaged with new models and attract new customers.
Customer experience is also dominating the marketing conversation, and so it should. Knowing and understanding your customer is tantamount to successful growth. Feedback from customer experience forms the product roadmap, which in the case of most Silicon Valley companies helps shape their growth, investor return, and ultimate success. But so often valuable customer experience story elements are left on the cutting room floor. Savvy PR pros will take these elements and create stories that support the brand narrative and amplify them across the media ecosystem.
Conversely, when negative stories occur, (and they do, just ask Oscar Munoz or Pepsi) PR works to mitigate the negative elements with positive counters strategically placed to support the brand narrative that mitigates unpleasant experiences and memories. Proactive use of this technique should be the keystone of any crisis communications plan.
Public Relations can and must use data and customer experience to amplify and mitigate story to enhance the brand narrative. The intersection of defining, supporting and telling brand stories with insights from data and customer experience is where public relations fits into today’s marketing communications universe. After all, the stories will remain after the gold rush.
Walk Backs, Escort Bars and Re-accomodating...Oh My!
Contrary to popular belief, public relations is alive and well. This is apparent to anyone watching cable news, as the lack disciplined and proper public relations is feeding the news folks enough content to sink the Titanic, or at least the reputations and fortunes of Uber, United Airlines and most likely the Trump presidency.
Indeed, we have a president who is short on policy but long on trying to win the 24/7 news cycle with publicity. The result, much to his ire, is not what he wants. Sean Spicer, his press secretary, spends more time walking back statements than he does introducing well-planned, coherent policy. So much that his, and the administration’s credibility is shrinking along with their popularity in the polls. Seriously, Google ‘Sean Spicer walks back….’ and see what pops up, it's astounding.
As Recode’s Kara Swisher points out in a recent article, Uber’s image problems cannot be fixed by better PR folks who will bring magic bullets to the gunfight, but rather if the CEO refrains from dragging employees, especially female employees, to South Korean escort bars. It’s really hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube after that one. Though, many of the young Turks at Uber think it can be done. Ah, no. The question for them to ponder is, will people invest in a company with a CEO who has a problem with good judgment? Again, no.
Then we have United Airline CEO Oscar Munoz, who was just announced as “Communicator of the Year” by PR Week when he shot himself and the airline in the foot with an ill-conceived and defensive tweet in response to the social media outcry over the brutal removal of a passenger from a UA flight. We’ve all the seen the video, what was he thinking? There are better ways to stand up for your employees and brand than trivializing barbarism with statements about ‘re-accommodating’ passengers. I’m not even sure that is a word, if it is, it's an airline industry term that has worked its way into the lexicon. Those of us outside the airline industry, the ones who pay for tickets, don’t re-accommodate. Further, if that is their definition of removing passengers from a flight it’s now forever linked to the image of a bloody, screaming man being drug down an aisle way.
Here is what he should have said, "United Airlines regrets this isolated event and we are working diligently with authorities to ensure the continued safety of our passengers. We will further address this issue once a complete audit of the situation has been conducted.” This approach positions the incident as a one-off and buys UA time to discover what went on and plan their next move. Further, a crisis PR plan should have been in place and invoked from the moment this happened last Sunday evening.
Good public relations is the result of well-crafted planning, solid policy, and discipline. Why? Because is really hard, if not impossible to fix ‘walk backs’, visits to escort bars and re-accommodating bloody, battered, screaming passengers. Oh, my.
DNA and Environment - A Brand Story
Recently a group of woodcutters working in India’s Katarniya Ghat forest range spotted a naked 12-year-old girl playing with a troop if monkeys as if she was one of them. The workers alerted the police who fought with the monkeys to capture the girl. After they successfully got her in their car the screaming, screeching monkeys chased them down the road.
Doctors examined the girl who often dropped to all fours, moved around like an animal and ate food directly off the ground as her troop friends would. The doctor's observation was that she had been raised by the troop from an early age and spent many formative years learning their behavior and customs. The age old argument of whether we are shaped by our DNA or our environment was on display, and environment won.
Brands too are shaped by their DNA and changed by the environment. Last week Pepsi was forced to pull their much-touted ad depicting a model (Kendall Jenner) leaving a shoot to join a protest march. The ad very much reflected Pepsi’s brand DNA of living in the moment and the new generation. But no sooner was the ad launched when howls of protest screamed across social media. Many felt the ad trivialized social activism, that Pepsi was demeaning the importance of BlackLives Matter and the resistance that has quickly evolved since Trump was elected. So large was the outcry that Pepsi pulled the ad; another win for the environment.
Technology brands are also shaped by environmental shifts. Years ago I was leading public relations for CacheFlow (now Blue Coat Systems) and promoting its unique caching technology to business and technology influencers The brand promise was that CacheFlow sped the internet by allowing web objects to be stored closer to the end use than the host server. Today a fast internet is as common and as easily found as a beer in a brewery. But in those days It could take minutes for AOL to download, rather than seconds. There was a need for speed if the promise of the internet was to come to fruition
CacheFlow met that need, yet after just two years the demands of the internet had evolved. In response, CacheFlow rebranded as Blue Coat with a focus on security and speeding applications across the internet. Same technological DNA, but reengineered to meet environmental needs that evolved fairly quickly. The first was a greater need for security, followed by the explosion of apps flowing across public and private networks.
This was a remarkable realization of the company’s DNA, their brand story and how they could control their narrative by reading the tea leaves of environmental change.
#marketing, #branding, #communications
The $64.00 Question and Why
One of the most valuable lessons I ever learned about brand storytelling, public relations, and content creation came from the theater.
As a young man, I was enthralled with the theater; the collaboration between the actor, director, playwright and technical team captured me. The idea that this disparate group of artists could come together to create something that moved the audience to feel and think differently struck me as a powerful and necessary.
Alas, the theater is a poor place to make a living and with a child on the way, I entered the world of communications, advertising and media as a copywriter with some trepidation. After all, I did not have an award winning portfolio or plaques hanging on my wall. I had a cheap suit and lots of chutzpah which some how landed me an interview for the role of a copywriter with Australia’s leading radio network. Sitting in the conference room, trying not to sweat through my suit, I dutifully answered questions from the station program director and sales manager. Then they asked the $64.00 question, “What is the most important aspect of writing ad copy for our audience?”
Of course, I had not anticipated this question, truth be told I had anticipated very little but the discomfort of the entire interview process. I paused for what seemed like an eternity while I thought of a cogent reply when a memory from a rehearsal of the musical HAIR came back to me.
We had paused the rehearsal to discuss the direction we wanted a scene to take when my old mentor Bob Schweitzer remarked, “Let’s think about what we want the audience to think and feelat this moment in the story.”
With more assurance than I had, I looked at the interviewers and replied, “The most important thing when writing for your, or any audience is to ask what it is we want them to think and feel when they experience our communications.” They stared at me for a moment, looked at each other and shook their heads in approval. I started the next week and have not stopped working since.
I still ask that question before starting every PR campaign, blog post, brand story narrative or press release. It’s the $64.00 question that leads to awareness and engagement.
Why? Because until you move them to think and feel differently, they won’t take action.
David and Goliath: How to Own Your Story
I’ve always thought of my career in public relations as an adventure that continues to unfold before me. In 2008 I found myself in Sydney, Australia running the technology practice for Fleishman-Hillard where we had just signed a Canadian manufacturer of network and telecom components. The company, then unknown in Australia had successfully sold a module to Telstra, the large public utility that provides Australians with telephone and telecommunications products and services.
The module was embedded in a new, powerful router Telstra was going to announce at a major news conference within a few days. Telstra was to position their router as the powerful WIFI solution for the SOHO. During the initial onboarding telephone call with our new client, we were tasked with launching them at the media event.
After the call ended the account team sat around the conference table letting the enormity of the challenge sink in. No one in AU knew who they were, and why would anyone care about a module the size of a postage stamp? We put on our thinking caps and dug in. The first order of business was to understand exactly what the module meant to the Telstra router.
The team called the client’s Australian General Manager of Sierra Wireless and asked him. After running through the technical specs of the module he stated, “It powers the whole bloody router. The thing won’t deliver the speed and bandwidth Telstra claims without it.”
Eureka! We had a story. This little module, the size of a postage stamp, provided the juice for Telstra’s most powerful router to date. It was a variation of the David vs Goliath story, and we used t construct to create our brand story and strategy for the Telstra media event.
We knew two things about the media and audience we were talking to. First, Australian’s don’t like Telstra all that much. It’s the big, hairy utility that raises rates while customers wait for service. Further, Australian’s love to support the little guy making his way in a harsh environment. It's part of their cultural DNA.
With this in mind, we crafted a ‘guerilla’ launch campaign that involved creating the ‘way’ we wanted the media to receive our news within the context of the Telstra announcement in. Setting the stage so the media discovered our story in a certain manner was crucial to our success. With time against us, we rolled up our sleeves and went to work.
The team arrived at the media event prior to the announcement, identified our target reporters as they arrived, approached them and introduced the General Manager with a “Here’s the real story about Telstra’s router” pitch. While we spoke with them the press release and materials arrived in their inbox so they could easily create their stories. (We noted many were reading our press release while Telstra executives were speaking about their router.)
The result was our client received placement in the top third of every story published about Telstra’s router, with the positioning we wanted. By the late afternoon, we had successful placements in all online tech pubs and in the mainstream business news that evening and the next morning. David now owned the story like a boss which set the stage for his next act.
#marketing, #public relations, #commuications
Trump's Folly and the Art of Branding
Trump at a rally in Hershey, PA Dec. 16, 2106
Branding, like any art, requires discipline. It is best created with the consistency of thought, word, and deed. Without this discipline, confusion sews the seeds of doubt and soon the brand you have is not the one you want.
Nowhere is this more apparent than with our president, his administration, and current political party leadership. Here are few examples; in his inaugural address, Trump promised disenfranchised Americans that they would never again be forgotten. Yet we now know from the CBO analysis of the newly minted American Healthcare Act that 24 million average Americans will lose their healthcare coverage by 2026 while the wealthy will receive a 400 million dollar tax break.
Further, after seven years of bickering and moaning about the Affordable Healthcare Act, the Republican party cannot agree on a viable alternative. The party is deeply skewed in their response to Speaker Paul Ryan’s proposed American Health Care Act with conservatives hating it, Trump disagreeing with it and Ryan and followers spinning TV ads on the public to gain support for the hastily crafted legislation.
Trump himself is the walking, talking contradiction of presidential character, sitting alone in the White House at 3 am spewing libelous tweets accusing the former president of wiretapping Trump Tower while offering no evidence to support the accusations. Perhaps this is appeasing his base who believe there is a conspiracy behind every nook and cranny of life. But they are in the minority, and his brand is becoming further sullied and tarnished with every tweet. Especially when he sends Spicer and Conway out to put a new spin on what he actually meant when he said “wiretap”.
The list of brand offenses goes on and on, but one thing is sure, he is doing more irreparable damage every time he opens his mouth because his rhetoric is inconsistent. The confusion has arrived, the doubt is growing.
Is Your Brandstory Increasing Sales?
Story is an important element of all marketing but can be a strong driver of revenue growth when linked to a pricing strategy. In 2005, Michael J. Hiscox, a Harvard professor of social sciences and his student, Nicholas F.B. Smyth conducted research to see of consumers were motivated to purchase products they knew to be created by workers in good working conditions as opposed to products created in sweatshops.
With an upscale retail store in New York City as their stage, they began by selling two brands of towels, both labeled as being made from organic cotton. They measured sales of both brands to establish a baseline. Then they labeled one brand of towels as created in working conditions that adhered to, and met, certified Fair Trade practices. The label stated, “These towels have been made under fair labor conditions in a safe healthy working environment which is free of discrimination, and where management is committed to respecting the rights and dignity of works.”
Over the next 30 days, sales of the brand of towels with this label increased by 11 percent while sales of the towels not labeled remained stagnant. Next, they increased the price of the labeled towels by 10 percent and witnessed a 20 percent increase sales. It seems consumers related strongly to the towels with a positive story. This has been proven time and again by cause-marketing brands such as Tom’s Shoes who donate a pair of shoes to the poor with every pair sold.
While an increase in sales is always desirable, the real power of Hiscox and Smyth’s experiment the discovery of a brand's story. For here a brand can create a powerful story that engages customer interest and loyalty to support new products over the life of the brand.
What cause do you support? How can you weave it into your marketing to make a positive impact on your target audience, your brand, and the world? #marketing, #brandstory, #sales,
The Birds and Bees of Branding
In his 2010 book, Connected, Nicholas Christakis discusses his 30 years of research into social networks. One startling discovery was that social networks have memory.
Think about that, social networks have memory. Think about how you shared a memory with someone. You created a character, you or others, (hero) doing something (taking action) to discover or learn something and arrive at a resolution, good or bad. You told a story when you shared your memory.
The very elements of story are entrenched in networks of people, they flow and reverberate in the networks consciousness. Christakis also found they have an internal intelligence and often operate like a beehive or a flock of birds; collaboratively to achieve an objective necessary to survival.
Humans share story this way as it is necessary to survival. Brands who tap into this will become part of the internal intelligence, part of the collective memory and remain resilient with the network.
What 2 Billion Social Media Users Mean for Brand Storytelling
Social media allows us to connect with 1000s of people with the click of a mouse. Experts predict by 2020 there will be 2.95 billion social media users, that is approximately half of the human population. Certainly, social media and the digital age is reawakening our innate human sense that we are all connected.
One hundred million years ago early-man would venture into the wilderness to explore, hunt for food and return to the village to share their adventures with those who stayed behind. At night, sitting around the fire, they would share their tales through dance (often imitating animals) drawings in the dirt and the first attempts at language.
The deeply ingrained instinct to listen and retell stories which allow us to share and thrive.
What links today’s social user with early man’s tales around the fire is 'story.' We have a deeply ingrained instinct to listen and retell stories which allow us to share and thrive. In his revelatory work, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari makes the case that Homo Sapiens evolved to dominance while Neanderthals and other groups of early man faded away for two reasons: one Homo Sapiens learned to control fire and two, they learned to communicate and created communities to raise their young, feed and protect themselves. Story was certainly an important element in both of these developments.
Numerous surveys show that a large part of the time we spend on the Internet is with social networking. In 2010, according to a Nielsen study, Americans spent 36% of their time online communicating and networking on social media, blogs, email and texting. It is easy to understand that ‘social’ is fulfilling a deep-seated need to communicate, network and create a community that has slipped away since the early days of sitting around a fire sharing stories.
Brand storytellers are challenged to harness that time spent online to create awareness, shape perception and drive results for their brand. However, we are also challenged to find non-traditional advertising and marketing ways to do so. Why? Because the culture of communicating via social is built on authenticity and trust. The very same attributes you may want to be associated with your brand. Running TV commercials, click bait and other forms of traditional online marketing can erode authenticity and trust.
Story is a very human endeavor. In creating stories that engage with social media users we must look at the elements of story that allow it to engage on a human level.
Story Elements
- Make sure you have a beginning, middle and an end (Act 1, Act 2, Act 3)
- Tell an engaging story to the audience: character and action working together
- Speak truthfully
- Infused personalities into the story
- Create characters the audience roots for
- Never give it all way
- The end should relate back to the beginning
- Passion and Trust – story requires this, as does a brand
- Conflict
There are many ways to use story online to promote your brand in an engaging way. Here is one example.
5 PR Strategies Start-ups Must Leverage
Over the years the role of public relations as changed. No longer do we have to know each and every journalist, (there is 150,000 journalists, editors and freelance writers in the US alone), crank out press releases on IBM Selectric typewriters and drink scotch with hard-boiled newspaper men.
Today the role of Public Relations is that of a storyteller. In our digital age, it is imperative that companies act like publishing houses, producing purpose-driven stories (content) designed to create and own its narrative. Too often, especially in the Silicon Valley, we see young tech entrepreneurs so solely focused on developing and shipping a great product they forget their brand story is just as crucial to their success.
So how does a start-up begin to leverage a winning Public Relations strategy? Here are five things that are an absolute must:
- Start early. Waiting a week before your product ships and then trying to find a PR pro on Upwork, or a similar platform, to write a press release is not going to work out the way you want. When Ad Tech entrepreneur Chris Gonzales founded Gnack, he and his team built a foundation for their public relations programs in a deliberate step-by-step approach. First, they got their messaging together, then created media lists of the targets they needed to work with and pre-pitched them. They then developed a case study based on the results from a beta user to build credibility with the media and then they drafted a press release. The process took over a month and paid off handsomely.
- Develop a story the media want to tell their audience. As Nigel Hawthorne, EMEA marketing manager for Sky Networks says, “Just because it's interesting to you doesn’t mean it's interesting to anyone else.” Focus on creating stories that position your product or service as the hero as this construct follows the natural laws of 'story' which is more engaging.
- Stop talking about how your product works. The audience for how your product works is small compared to the audience who wants to know how your product benefits them in some unique way.
- Employ consistency of message across media channels. Imagine if you went to a movie and the first 30-40 minutes of the film was about zebras on the African plains, the second part of the movie was about veterinarians, while the end of the movie was about flying animals into space? Despite the fact the movie was all about animals, you would be pretty confused. The same thing happens when you tell your story with inconsistent messaging. Your audience becomes confused.
- Think in PowerPoint, not in Excel. Polaris venture capitalist Gary Swart thinks too many Silicon Valley start-ups want to be very tactical and data-driven and think like an Excel spreadsheet when it comes to Public Relations, and not about how they can tell their story or think like a PowerPoint presentation. He also reminds us that the GAP does not put everything in the storefront window, just enough to get the customer to come inside.
Successful Public Relations is like investing in the stock market, it requires patience, a plan and a consistent approach that allows for flexibility to change course when the markets do.
#Technology, #Entrepreneurs, #Start-ups, #Marketing, #Public Relations
Only 20% of TV commercials are fully viewed...
If you view television like me, when a commercials interrupt the program I’m watching I grab my mobile device and start checking social feeds, the news, email…anything with more compelling content than the advertisement. The issue is the interruption of the story I was engrossed in. And since the interruption is not replaced with something of similar interest, I reach for my other screen and dial-up something I am interested in.
According to a 2014 study by the Harvard Business Review, “the percentage of ads considered fully viewed and getting high attention has decreased dramatically, from 97 percent in the early 1990s to less than 20 percent today. This is a dramatic decline spurred by the proliferation of social media and a decrease in the use of story-craft in advertising.
In December, Comedy Central addressed this issue with the release of branded content ‘shorts’ designed to hold viewers attention while branding a sponsor. Instead of airing a series of 30 or 60-second commercials they are airing what has been given the name ‘linear commercial pods’. They really are well constructed stories with a fancy name.
By reconstructing the media buy advertisers now have more freedom to create meaningful stories that position the brand in a more engaging manner. Rather than pitch product benefits we can now launch a character on a journey, allow him/her to overcome obstacles, reach a satisfactory resolution - all while positioning the product as a facilitator of the journey. The first of these linear commercial pods aired on Comedy Central in December. Titled Erik Gets Crabs, its the first in a series called Handy and will feature a ‘ commercial short’ for Zales.
When we break down the elements of this ‘short-story’ we discover an engaging character, (most likely he represents the target audience demographic) who is faced with a series of challenges (cracking the crab- representing the product) who solves the challenge in a humorous (human) manner. All this takes place on the set of a commercial being filmed for Joe’s Crab Shack which may actually be a Joe’s Crab Shack.
Certainly, this is more engaging content than most 30-second spots for anything. It uses story-craft in its best form to brand the sponsor in a human manner that viewers can relate too. Its message is you will have fun at Joe’s Crab Shack. And, since we live in the era of social, viewers can share the fun as well. Something television advertisers didn’t have just a short time ago.
Is Your Brand Living Up To Its Purpose?
Recently while leading a discussion with a group of writers about marcom writing I was asked what is a brand? While we can all easily recognize brands when we see them, but we sometimes struggle with an encompassing definition.
A brand, I replied, is a promise.
The question that followed was tougher; what is a brand’s purpose? After a few minutes of deliberation, we concurred that a brand’s purpose is to empower users to experience something positive and associate that feeling with the brand. In the 70s Coca Cola’s advertising campaign associated drinking Coca Cola with the altruistic joy of teaching the world to sing.
Brand guru, Simon Mainwaring points out in a recent post, “The most successful advertising campaigns of 2017 will look beyond self-interest and offer solutions for social change by embodying the principle that prosperity is the well-being of many, rather than the wealth of a privileged few.”
The Budweiser ad that ran in Super Bowl LI told the story of their co-founder, young Adolphus Busch who came to our country and overcame the intolerance many immigrants continue to experience. By leading with a commentary on current social concerns, in this case, the immigration debate, Budweiser is positioning themselves as more than a beer. They are saying, “we get it, it matters and we have lived this…we are you.” They have defined a purpose for you to engage with their brand on a higher level.
With purpose-driven storytelling, brands have the opportunity to connect with customers on a human level. When you consider the many choices they have, engaging with them this way creates awareness, shapes perception and drives results. In this case, the Budweiser commercial was the most watched commercial during the Super Bowl and has been view 21.5 million times on You Tube. Now, those are metrics any marketer would like to own.
You can view more recent purpose-driven commercials: Airbnb’s #WeAccept, Coca Cola’s #TogetherisBeautiful, 84 Lumber’s Journey 84, Audi’s #DriveProgress,
Successfully sailing the seas...
There are countless ideas for the next great app, world-changing technology or ways to solve complex market needs. So why do some make it to market successfully, while others never get out of the harbor?
It’s often not the quality of the vessel. The standardization of design and manufacturing platforms create a level playing field for creators. Engineering schools are turning out brilliant minds daily.
So what are the reasons Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman and others were able to create awareness, shape perception and drive results to successfully navigate across the ocean?
Everyone wants to see their new product or company on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the lead story on Tech Crunch or mentioned by Quinten Hardy in the New York Times. “Just right me a press release, so we can get into the major dailies,” they cry.
I’ve sat in countless meetings with some brilliant minds over the past 15 years. I’ve heard this expectation being repeated many times. I have never seen it happen, despite knowing journalists at each of these publications. It never happens because a PR pro simply creates a press release. That doesn’t mean you don’t needa press release, it means there is more to the game.
There a few CRITICAL elements you need before you draft that all important release.
The first thing you need is a PLAN. This is what Jobs, Zuck, Hoffman and the rest had. The PLAN should answer important questions like; who will buy your product and why? If you are selling a product into the enterprise, (a b2b play), is demand generated by fear? If it is, a different plan is required than if you are selling to consumers, (b2c), who may purchase on appeal, sparkle, or desire. What if you are selling b2b2c, the ocean is now more complex.
Knowing this will determine your target audience? What if they don’t read the New York Times? Why would you want to be where your target audience isn’t? Sounds simple. Makes a lot of sense, right. Then why do I continue to hear this false expectation?
The public relations and journalism milieu is an ever-changing ecosystem comprised of over 300,000 influencers, all of whom are tasked with entertaining and enlightening a dynamic, often jaded audience. If you want to be in the WSJ, then you better have a story that will entertain and enlighten a million readers in just a few minutes. Plus the editor has 1000 pitches a day sent to them. When you look at the challenge in these terms, hiring someone on Upwork to write a press release is like bringing a water pistol to the gunfight at the OK Corral.
Creating awareness for your product or company deserves the same patience and respect as any other investment. Here are the three most common go-to-market mistakes tech entrepreneurs make:
1. No Plan - Would you set off to sail across the ocean without a plan, a compas,s and navigational tools? Why would you risk the all-important perception of your product, business, and reputation by not having a solid go-to-market plan?
2. Under Capitalized: There are two ways to be under-capitalized, 1) No money to invest in the professional marketing and services required to successfully launch. If you want to buy a new car, do you go to the dealer and say, “I put all my money into getting to your dealership, so let me drive one of your cars for free for awhile, then when I have money I will pay you it?” How long do you think you would last on the dealer’s lot? Yet, this is very request I hear from technology entrepreneurs all the time. If you have put all your money into the development of the product and cannot afford sales and marketing, you need to either sell that idea to someone who can, or raise funds to create a company to launch it properly, AND 2) intellectually under-capitalized. I once had a client who was moving from a traditional industry into a digital industry with a really good product idea. The problem was he had no digital footprint; no website, no LinkedIn profile, no Twitter account and no idea how to present his new offering online using Go To Meeting. But he was sure he was all ready to launch his new product to an important client group.
He worked hard on his Powerpoint presentation and made countless phone calls to the prospect. Then when he was finally invited to a face-to-face meeting to pitch no one had business cards to give him. He had spent months fighting to get this meeting and had not developed a way to understand, condition and follow-up with his audience the way they expected. Yet this was where his prospect lived and did business. He was told to set these elements up and play the game the way his target audience expected, but he did not. He wanted to be a digital company, yet not act like one. The result was a not good. As Mark Twain once quipped, “It's not what you don’t know that will kill you, its what you know for sure that will.”
3. Wait Too Long: It takes the proper amount of time to create the right plan, research the market, develop the messaging, test and refine, define and condition the media and build the tools required to successfully launch your product or company.Waiting a week before you want to launch falls into the intellectually undercapitalized category.
Even with all the right plans and tools, there is no guarantee that you will successfully navigate the seas and launch your product in such a way to create the results you desire. But isn’t it better to set sail with a properly funded plan and experienced sailors?
Things happen in threes...
The old adage that everything happens in threes recently happened to me. I am a cyclist, I ride a road bike. It’s what keeps me sane and free. The joke is, Edge isn’t fit to be around if he hasn’t ridden his bike, at least every other day for 30 miles or so.
Recently I’ve had three friends experience unexpected accidents while riding, all within a three-month period. It can be a dangerous sport, errant drivers, miscalculations on curves while descending and unexpected cardiac events can make for bad days in the saddle.
It should deter us, but it doesn’t. It’s worth the risk. The endorphins, camaraderie, and sense of community riding provides are priceless. You could find less doing other things, still have an accident and die. So why not do what makes you happy? I have yet to find a better way to spend a day than a long ride, followed by lunch with friends and a nap. Try it. You might find happiness comes in threes too.
What is a brand worth?
Recently at a wine tasting at Cru in Madera, CA an attendee asked the winemaker, Ken Post, about how wine was priced. Why were some wines sold at $100.00 at bottle while others at $10.00? Is it really a matter of one wine being superior to another or were other factors involved, such as vintage, year, brand, distribution and marketing?
Ken paused then said, “Do you agree the wine your are tasting is a great wine?” The crowd nodded its approval and almost everyone sipped some more with great satisfaction. “Now, raise your hands if you would pay $60.00 a bottle for it.” No one raised their hands. “See, I’ve easily sold this at $60.00 a bottle, but I sell a boatload more at $20.00, “ he explained.
Ken’s answer made me think about the relationship between quality and value. Value is what it is worth to someone. What one person finds valuable another may not. Quality, on the other hand, is the character of the entity. Is it of superior, average or poor being, does is work well, stand up to external forces, achieve its purpose, is it elegant or sophisticated? These are some of the ways we judge quality. We tend to judge value by how much we spent and what the results were.
Often in business, we focus too much on the value of short-term results and not on the long-term effect of quality. Take Virgin, for example, we know that whatever enterprise Sir Richard turns to will have a certain quality about it. It’s his brand that he has carefully cultivated over the years. It’s the quality you expect from his work.
What qualities do you bring to your brand? What is it worth to your business? How do you want to be remembered?