Orbital symmetry and marketing truths

Our solar system has one star, four rock-based inner planets, an asteroid belt, and four gas giant outer planets. Sorry Pluto.

The solar system is a beautiful apparatus. It's movements are predictable and constant and its unique characteristics can be compared against other solar systems we see in our galaxy.


However the structure of our solar system is not unique. It's a pattern that is found in other parts of the galaxy too:

- Rocky planets close to the star
- Gas planets far away from the star

It's believed that as celestial bodies formed from pressure and gas, their gravitational fields expanded and pulled particulae in. Heavier particulae (metals such as iron) eventually gathered to form rocky planets. Since these elements had a heavier atomic weight, they were drawn in closer to the star. Lighter elements stayed further away from the star and formed gas giants, like Saturn, pictured below.

(BTW, another theory is that planets formed based on the distance from the sun and the temperature of where the properties of basic elements could remain stable).


Obviously I don't know my physics too well. It's one of the high school science subjects I really wished I had taken.

But consider how mechanical this all seems. The solar system is beautiful. It's a complex architectural masterpiece crafted at the atomic level. Our understanding of this masterpiece is based on what we can observe. We know that iron is heavier than helium. We know that plutonium is more unstable than gold.

Our foundation of modern physics is based on indusputable atomic properties. Truths.


So what is our foundation of modern marketing based on? What are the unshakable marketing truths which we formulate our campaign hypotheses and customer segmentations on?

1. Consumers look for enhanced well-being through the tangible or intangible value derived from consumption of a product or service. RIGHT.

2. Complete information is impossible. Consumers will never know all the product specifications, possible prices, and availabilities. It is also impossible to perfectly rationalize the information from other consumers of the product or service. RIGHT.

Are those the only ones?

I really think so. Consider the classical marketing assumptions are being broken down and invalidated:

1. Consumers trust the messages they read in marketing communications. WRONG.

2. Consumers can easily be convinced to purchase on price and emotional benefits alone. WRONG.

3. Marketing is meant to be one way: consumers receive information, consumers receive the product. WRONG.


You know the assumption being challenged that really makes life scary for marketers?

That consumers need to consume.

Our economy is based on production and consumption. For a while, it was a lot like the solar system. It was an architectural masterpiece in perfect orbital symmetry and cosmic balance.

Consumers behaved.

But consumers aren't behaving anymore.


The death of our solar system is predicted to occur in 6 billion years. The sun will burn out and become a white dwarf, losing mass and energy. Planets, including Earth, will no longer feel the gravitational pull to the sun and might be ripped out of orbit by the pull of stronger, larger astronomical bodies.

Sound familiar, marketers? It's hardly a Nostradamian prediction, we can already see our consumers walking away. Forget about consumers not listening, consider the impacts of consumers not buying.

(All pictures were taken from the Hubble space telescope. Check out the full album here)

Basics of branding: Arnell's Pepsi concepts

Too often, positioning strategy is seen as some lofty, abstract, and intangible activity. It's mistaken as a marketing black art because the process that goes into its execution is so subjective.

Frankly, some people are better at understanding consumer strategy than others. They have unique insights into how consumers think, are familiar with multiple points of appropriate cultural references, and can argue for a positioning stance based on a foresight to know that it will effectively ready a brand or product for future success.

They know what consumers engage with and why.

The Pepsi rebrand that launched in January 2009 - including the redesign of a 30 year old logo - is one of those projects that required the expertise of this kind of strategic creative person.

The Peter Arnell Group was the agency responsible for concept development of Pepsi's new logo. A document released (perhaps seeded into the social media community so bloggers like me will pick it up and buzz about it...) describes the rationale behind the new Pepsi logo:


Apparently, "emotive forces shape the gestalt of the brand identity" - a phrase I love! - which means that "things that stir emotions in people influence the whole personality of Pepsi".

Take a look at the document. It's full of bizarre diagrams that deconstruct and code the DNA of the Pepsi brand. It's like looking at the Human Genome Project for a soft-drink.




The value in doing this? The agency is showing it's skills for strategic creativity. It's demonstrating through applied concepts why the new design makes sense, rather than some arbitrary selection criteria that chooses one design over another based on what someone likes the best. It's an attempt to be really scientific - in a creative way.

This matters because the more strategically creative value an agency is able to deliver (in the form of design conceptualization or consumer insight), the greater differentiation they will have against competitors. The greater differentiation, the higher the premium they can charge for their services.

Read the report, see what you think.

How advertising agencies grew up

In another fantastic example of my two birds, one stone philosophy, I'm blog-posting and collecting supporting evidence for a presentation my group is making on Thursday about ad agencies.

I'm reading this interesting book, Adland, all about the growth of the advertising industry. It's a summary account of major global agencies and their influential founders. The book gives equal credit to the importance of consumer insight (research), outstanding creativity (artistry), and compelling messaging (copywriting) as elements of successful agencies. Often the most noteworthy agencies were started as a partnership between a planner, an art director, and a copywriter (or a combination of).

Here are a few examples of successful advertising agencies and how they grew up:

Lord & Thomas, an old print ad agency at the turn of the 20th century into the thirties, led by Albert Lasker, known as the true father or modern advertising. Lasker created the form of the modern agency with a department of copywriters and a focus on sales, planning, and business development. He recruited famous copywriter Claude Hopkins, known for a rational sales-focused style honed through research and empirical results. As simple an obvious as it now sounds, the 'Hopkins Approach' to good ad development implies finding the unique factor for any product that sets it apart from its rivals. Groundbreaking stuff in 1907. The importance here is that even as early as 1907, there was a strong scientific basis to advertising and agencies that could deliver a more effective advertisement were more successful. Lord & Thomas is now DraftFCB, part of Interpublic.

JWT, founded in 1878 by J. Walter Thompson (who actually bought out the agency owned by Willian Carlton), one of the largest and most successful advertising agencies ever (now part of the WPP holding company). Grew significantly from 1920s to 1950s under Stanley Resor and his wife Helen Landsdowne who emphasized the need for credible research to back up claims of product superiority (think doctors, psychologists). JWT is now the largest US agency, fourth largest in the world.

Young & Rubicam, founded in 1923 by John Young and Raymond Rubicam, is now one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. It grew like other modern agencies but had a strong focus on backing up ideas with solid research. It may therefore be considered among the less risk-taking agencies because of its more dogmatic approach to campaign development. Y&R was known for its creativity in the 1950s, but Rubicam also wanted to instill a practical, reason-based foundation in the work. In 1932, Rubicam hired George Gallup (yes, that Gallup), a sociologist and researcher to head a consumer research departmnt of 400 people within the agency. The primary research collected by field researchers working for Y&R would lead to the development of better, more relevant campaigns. In 2000 Young and Rubicam Brands (including Wunderman and Young & Rubicam) was acquired by WPP.


DDB, founded by Ned Doyle, Maxwell Dane, and Bill Bernbach in 1949 as the antithesis to what was seen at the time as stodgy and conservative creative work by the major agencies (Greay, Y&M, O&M, JWT). This was the creative shop in the 1950s, the team responsible for the famous VW Lemon ads. DDB established itself and grew based on creative risk-taking and simply great ideas rather than a focus on consumer research (the Levy's Rye Bread ad, shown above, is a classic example from DDB). A defining quality at DDB was the deliberate collaboration between art directors and copywriters to spark great ideas, known as the creative revolution in advertising. DDB merged with BBDO and Needham in 1986 to create Omnicom, then the largest advertising company in the world. DDB is seriously successful, with many creative awards (to this day) the highest revenue ($12.69B in 2007) of any agency.

Chiat/Day, creative hotspot founded in Los Angeles in 1962, best known for the '1984' Apple Superbowl ad (shown below). Although Stanley Pollitt at BMP developed the practice of 'account planning' - placing researcher and account managers directly together on client teams to better facilitate consumer insights, it was the application of account planning at Chiat/Day that catalyzed the agency's meteoric rise. From the introduction of account planning organization in 1982 to 1992, the agency's client billings grew from $50MM to $700MM. Chiat/Day merged with the European collective TBWA in 1993 and was acquired by Omnicom.



Wieden + Kennedy, founded in 1982 by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy out of Portland Oregon. W+K is a big favourite of mine for producing amazing creative work, notably Coke's 'Coke Side of Life' and the Nike 'Just Do It' campaign. The shop was the first to challenge the advertising hegemony of Madison Avenue. It's now one of the largest independently owned agencies and still producing great work, like this fantastic spot for Nike (shown below) which premiered during the 2008 Olympics. I still get chills and cry. Seems to have grown as a result of strong TV capabilities.



M&C Saatchi, founded in 1996 by the same Saatchi brothers who were forced out of their original agency, their namesake Saatchi & Saatchi. M&C Saatchi is relatively small but global, highly creative, and highly strategic in their thinking. It uses the concept of 'Brutal Simplicity' to deconstruct brands and consumer strategies to their simplest elemental forms. One word thinking. It's meant to get to the heart of insight. (Note, I really want to work here when they finally open a Toronto office!)

180, an innovative shop founded in 1998, spun off by account managers from Wieden + Kennedy's Amsterdam office who committed the most grievous of sins, pitching for Adidas, the hated rival of Nike, W+K's primary client. 180 is a multicultural agency, strongly reflecting the diversity of its Amsterdam HQ. In 2007 they opened an Los Angeles office and are now 50% owned by Omnicom. 180 describes that they first "think of the big idea and then apply it to media channels. If it doesn't work in all channels, then it's not a big idea." Interesting example of an agency that relies on incredible talent as a driver of creativity.

StrawberryFrog, started in 1999 (also in Amsterdam) as a digital media agency, now is a specialist in creating cultural movements. An example of a shop that really gets the optimism and creative risk-taking (remember DDB in the 1950s?) that makes advertising exciting. The agency specializes in popular movements using a wide array of contact points with consumers, from outdoor advertising to web-based initiatives. They design brand environments, says cheif CD, Mark Chalmers. Cool, cool stuff. Check out their story of advertising.

What I think is cool - and a key linchpin of my 601 group's strategic recommendation for our site - is that successful agencies have grown by a deliberate recognition of the importance of strategic planning and consumer research. In the case of BMP, this function is highly integrated into campaign development in the form of the 'account planning' model. In the case of Young & Rubicam, it's the purposeful distancing of a research department to develop pure, unadulterated and meaningful consumer truths.

Agencies need strategy. It's a higher value adding service and something that can improve the quality and relevance of campaigns for consumers.

But in other examples, agencies became successful simply because of the way they did work. They were more cultural. Riskier and with fresher ideas. M&C Saatchi, DDB, StrawberryFrog, and 180 are examples.

So we're now left with an interesting industry - it's highly divided, with six massive players and their collection of agencies at one end (WPP, Omnicom, Havas, Publicis, Interpublic, and Dentsu) and small boutique standalone agencies at the other. In the middle are micro-networks of agencies with networks of regional offices or partnerships.

It's these mid-tier agencies which are the most interesting to look at because they defy convention. Sure, they're creative, but they're also executional experts at new media channels which they grew up using. StrawberryFrog is an example. Same for Razorfish/Avenue A. They're strategic creatives, talking big ideas as much as consumer marketing strategies. And they're winning business. Adidas is handled by Sid Lee out of Montreal and 180 from Amsterdam. Nike is handled by Wieden + Kennedy. Burger King is handled by Crispin Porter & Bogusky from Miami. The German boutique Heyer & Partners developed the McDonald's 'I'm Lovin' It' campaign.

So what happens when strategy is increasingly being determined by nimble shops that can produce a global impact but don't need global operations?

All accounts are up for grabs.

Important marketing memes of 2009

And we're back!

Memes are important thought trends in contemporary culture. They are widely distributed, fresh, and organically generated concepts and ideas that emanate and circulate rapidly in a network of plugged-in people. At their worst, memes can propagate racism. At their best, memes can propagate lolcatz like Ceiling Cat!


So I should probably cover up.

Anyway, to start off the new year, it's relevant to think about memes that might matter in marketing in 2009. Let's talk about the concepts, trends, and practices of marketers that will become more commonplace and popular. Let's talk about the ideas that will quickly disseminate through agencies and client teams, mastered by the savvy group of consumers, and eventually expectorated back to the teeming masses of mainstream culture.

In other words, let's talk about what are relevant marketing trends for 2009:

THE 'EXPERIENCE IT' MEME


In the context of the rising tide of greater relevance in advertising, some lucky consumers will find themselves the subject of rare interactions with marketers that go deeper than the banal and shallow ad pitch. Without buying, a privileged few prospects will be invited to try a product, brand, or service. But what they're really trying is an experience.

Remember when you were invited to try Gmail when it was still in beta mode? (Remember how awesome that felt!?)

Testing experience with consumers firsthand is like playing in a sandbox. It's safe, controlled, and a great petri dish to catalyze learnings for experiential improvements. Furthermore, you want to actively segment an select prospects to participate in the experience who you know will then actively go out and spread word of mouth among their networks.

Seeding networks is nothing new, but in 2009 expect to see more seeding based on complete brand experiences rather than simple trial testing or free offers. It's the culmination of consumers' undeniable influence on social diffusion of brands and the demand by consumers for things which they can live, rather than things which they can simply wear, listen to, or eat.

THE COLLABORATION MEME


You know how individual consumers are encouraged to put their stamp of approval on something? They're able to personalize their brands either through participating in the product development and customization process, influence brand direction by vocalizing their needs in web forums and social media, and make the brand their own through non-traditional uses.

Now take the personalization to a broader scale. You and your network personalize your product. You and your friends personalize your brand experience.

Gen Ys are social creatures. We thrive on instant communications within our highly networked worlds (that's why we go mental when the DSL isn't working...). Digitally socializing is an intensive part of our lives and the impact of one's network on the things we associate with is immense.

So why would a marketer allow your network to collaborate with you when developing your personal brand relationship with them? Because it's a direct acknowledgment by the marketer of the things that matter to the consumer: their friends. It's an invitation by the marketer for you to show your network that they are influencers.

Look for this style of meme to pop up with everything from iPod playlists to fashion to media content.

THE INTEGRATED MARKETING MIX MEME



This one is big. Integrated marketing communications refers to the choreography among different ad channels, all targeting the prospects with related messages, calls-to-action, and incentives. It's not merely enough anymore to pair a TV spot with a website. It's insufficient to have a radio play in the same market as targeted magazine drops.

Integrated marketing is a mix of advertising channels that are optimal to distribute the message YET still convey relevance to the end consumer. This is critical. Furthermore, this does not underscore an increase in the overall number of message impressions received by the prospect consumer. Instead, it speaks to two things: 1) a curriculum style that gradually educated prospect consumers about a product/service/brand that they would respond to; 2) a coordinated effort by a marketer to demonstrate relevance to consumers across multiple platforms.

What is still unexplained is whether marketers will contract out their entire marcom budget to a single agency that is capable of doing all things (integrated), or whether marketers will act as directors and fragment their marcom budget out to a variety of specialized agencies.

It's hard for me to call this one a meme because I believe this is a sea change in marketing towards relevance-based integrated campaign development. Perhaps it's meme-like insofar that there will be rapid awareness in 2009 and some traditional marketers will make nascet inroads to developing a more balanced communications strategy.

BTW, when I was thinking about an element to include for the word 'choreography', the Indian version of 'Thriller immediately came to mind...!

America's cultural zeitgeist

This maps shows electoral college districts that either voted more Democrat than from 2004 or more Republican than from 2004. It's from this great interactive feature in the NY Times showing voting shifts and an analysis of what significant voting changes occurred on Tuesday's historic election.

Consider this map. Look at the distribution of 'change'.

I won't try to hide my ebulience for the results of the election and I'm truly pie-eyed imagining the utopian possibilities for America that today seem just a little bit more attainable. They're more attainable not because Obama is President, but that America itself has seen what it is possible of achieving.

The new collective identity forged from Tuesday night is meaningful to consider. Things will be different. Things feel different. Let's look at this from a cultural/ethnographic point of view:

The hopefulness and change mantras united the country. This wasn't exclusive to Obama either as McCain picked up the change theme quickly after the RNC but ultimately unconvincingly.


The election meant so much to so many people. An Obama loss would have dealt a crushing sting to many people, particularly to Blacks, and would have meant that this group of Americans might have simply resigned themselves to a perceived lasting inequality - one that has been the source of deep national division and one that might have been perpetuated.


The belief that America is on a road, emphasized in Obama's acceptance speech, is
meaningful because it brings humility and a down-to-earth focused resolve to the moment. As ecstatic (or defeated) as Americans may feel now, there is still much work ahead.


A realization among everyone that we must accept domestic responsibility in addition to global responsibility - a philosophy of American exceptionalism that, through the Bush Doctrine, came to imply aggressiveness and a bully stance to presumably enforce democracy worldwide.

Note that none of the insights I've mentioned above are Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. The relevance of Obama's message was one of inclusiveness and ubiquity - everyone was involved. He decisively won in states perceived to be GOP bastions and conservative holdouts contributing to the gravity of his Presidency not as one that is bi-coastal, but as one that is truly national.

It's become cliched for Presidents-elect to emphasize a 'healing process' and national reconciliation after a divisive and brutal campaign. So he's not doing it.

It's wrong to be congratulatory and self-aggrandising with a win and give the equivalent of highly publicized mass shoutouts to 'what we've accomplished'. So he hasn't done it.

The tone set by Obama on Wednesday at 12:01am was focused. There is work to be done. There is progress to be made. Things are not right in America, but they will be improved.


The fervor and pomp will die down and as time passes we'll all become a little more reflective on November 4th, 2008 and the significance of this election. We'll learn of scandals hidden throughout the campaign from both camps and we'll scrutinize the choices Obama makes in the first 100 days with the precision of a Leica lens. Optimism will fade.

But don't lose sight of what America has now proclaimed through their shared democracy.

It was never about Obama, it was about America. It was never about Bush, it was about a shared national change.


America's cultural zeitgeist has advanced and while our complex feelings and intangible perceptions about how life will be like are difficult to articulate, we can appreciate that nationally, Americans can deservedly feel proud of their country and the more realistic course it's now on. It's not necessarily softer, it's instead more sustainable. It's not humble, it's humanistic.

Those who deify Obama as a prophet for progress are misguided. He is a monumental man but is a reflection of a monumental nation.

Kraft's innovative online push for Peek Freans

Marketing Mag wrote about a great new campaign today, the launch of new Peek Freans cookies by Kraft. It’s the way the campaign was executed that excites me and makes me think that this was a good innovative push. I’ve never heard of a web-based soap opera to introduce new cookie varieties! From prowling around in the campaign's Facebook page, I think it was co-created by the digital arm of MacLaren-McCann here in Toronto (nothing is safe!!!)



The message is funny and the brand isn’t taking itself too seriously. Kraft is great at branding and the modernization of Peek Freans, a 150 year old bakery with a 50 year legacy in Canada, is pretty impressive. The campaign focus is clearly women, 30-45, who are not necessarily tech-savvy but have received a viral video message from friends before. The seven-part series encourages repeat visits and there is a strong call to action to register your email on the site so that you can be notified of the next video launch (I assume weekly?). Good for CRM purposes too since this is a form of opt-in customer acquisition.

They’ve built a microsite to highlight the video campaign and I assume, the eventual release of the new cookies, Brown Sugar Blueberry with Flax and Lime Coconut with Probiotic. A few things that are missing – more information about the product please! And perhaps some coupons that I can take to the grocery store on my next visit to entice me to buy the new product…

The article talks about this campaign’s reach through other online platforms including Flickr and Facebook to add context to the more costly direct mail and in-store sampling that will be done. I hope I see more of this campaign to get the fuller picture.

Good job, Kraft and MacLaren-McCann!

Marketing to youth: Part 4: RELEVANCE

Relevance is the name of the game today in our five part series of youth marketing best practices.

You know those songs we have in our iPods that are really embarrassing and we don’t really share with anyone? Well, mine came on shuffle today, Hilary Duff’s “Wake Up”…so as I laughed and strutted my way home I reflected about Hilary Duff.

Where has she gone? What has she even done lately? It really does seem like she vanished off the face of the planet. The somewhat ephemeral nature of popstars is not particularly new or earth-shattering, but it is a useful context for tonight’s topic. Teens cultivate a remarkable bond with bands, celebrities, clothing styles, and friends, and then just as easily drop them from their folio of favourites. Record companies have encouraged and played to this fickleness and churn and prepare their next star far in advance of their fifteen minutes.

How does one explain this churn in youth consumer attitudes? It’s because new things become relevant in their lives. Like the Kirk and Spock performing a slingshot maneuver around the sun in a Klingon Bird of Prey in an attempt to go back in time in Star Trek IV, the Voyage Home (see minute 1:40…!), youth frequently can have a very strong attraction and repulsion from consumer brands. This is natural and all based on relevance.



When Gen Ys like something, it is strongly based on how relevant it is to their lives and its fit within the context of their other interests. Relevance implies a meaningfulness to me and an compatibility of my own values with those of the thing. For example:

• Obama is relevant to me because we share the same opinion of certain issues
• Triscuit crackers are relevant to me because they’re not made with trans fat and I am careful about what I eat
• Applying for graduate school bursaries is relevant to me because I am desperate for cash during a time when I have no income!

In marketing, relevance is therefore highly intertwined with the explicit (spoken) and implicit (assumed) values of the brand. To appeal to youth, these must be easily communicated and the relevance to them made singularly clear.

Experiential marketing is actually a useful technique in which to analyze relevance as a factor for marketing to youth. Consumer experiences are rich, holistic brand moments in which the individual plays the lead role. This form of marketing is effective to convey relevance because it hits the consumer at a moment they have actively opted-in to. A simple example: you try a potato chip sample in the grocery store because you want to. You’re likelihood to actually buy those chips is now much higher because of your active role in the environment of the grocery store. Compare your likelihood to buy the chips if you sampled them in-store versus on the street outside of a subway entrance – a situation that is irrelevant to the act of eating junk food.

Last year’s Virgin Festival provides some useful examples of experiential marketing being widely utilized as a way to drive home relevance of the brand to the target market. The psychological equation goes: ‘I am attending the Virgin Festival, General Motors is also attending the Virgin Festival, therefore GM is relevant to me and the context I’m in’. The same logic applies to why brands will sponsor bands or tv shows. It associates your interest for that band or show to the brand itself.

Here’s Virgin Mobile:



And xBox:



And Energizer:



…wow, look at that line. I actually played this last year at the Festival and won a beach ball!

But relevance must mean more than just making sure that the brand message hits the right themes and notes with the audience. It must also mean more than being present in situations where the consumer has a higher perceptual tuning to the message you’re selling (the grocery store, the Virgin Festival…). The biggest opportunity for relevance to be increased in youth marketing comes from leveraging the power of CRM programs. Building these out to a level of sophistication that captures varied forms of activity and interaction that youth may have with a brand is absolutely essential. Consider the profile of a the following young man who loves Axe bodyspray (otherwise known as glorified Glade air freshener for armpits):

• Purchases two cans on sale at Shoppers and swipes his Optimum card at the register
• Goes online to enter promotional codes from the cans he just bought on a special Axe microsite
• Watches a clip on the microsite and send it to his friends through a form on the microsite
• Enters a contest through his phone and participates in a viral MMS campaign for Axe
  

So this guy’s obviously avid, but consider the tremendous marketing potential of all the data that was collected. The frequency, the overall spend, the logins and online referrals, the multiple touchpoints now captured for this one guy…not to mention the shopping cart data collected and owned by SDM through his swipe of the Optimum card. (SDM can sell direct mailing and merchandising opportunities to Axe based on the collection of this in-store individual consumer data)

As discussed yesterday in relation to participation, CRM programs has the ability to integrate complex patterns of consumer activity and match this to existing demographic fields. The psychological profiling is limitless.

Very scary, yes, but the good news? With all the data we give up daily into the consumer world, we’re making it easier for marketers to hit us with messages that are relevant and meaningful. Marketing is no longer mass. As Tony Chapman states, it has moved ‘from mass to mind’, underscoring the greater emphasis on personalized marketing specific to each consumer.

Relevance must be a strong part of any campaign for youth. Relevant marketing campaigns stay in the consumer’s hands and mind longer than generic ads and are great methods of deepening a preexisting relationship. Although youth are highly skeptical and dismissive of marketing which can be too cloying and sycophantic for their personal information, they do respond to marketing that recognizes their unique individuality.

Tomorrow we will examine the fifth and final youth marketing best practice, uniqueness.

Marketing to youth: Part 3: PARTICIPATION

Today we’re going to analyze Participation, Part Three of our series on Marketing to Youth.

I am lazy. I love being lazy. That’s part of the reason why this blog post is a few hours delayed tonight! Youth are lazy about a lot of things. Don’t misconstrue it as apathy, just consider it to be the antithesis of other very intense relationships that youth have for things that interest them. So if I’m not actively engaged in something that excites me, stimulates me, or challenges me, it’s easy to see why I might be dragging my feet.

For marketers, activating youth on things that interest them really does depend on giving them opportunities for participation. It’s not good enough anymore to focus on the traditional facets of CRM-based marketing: name, address, age, and gender. Youth are complex individuals and binary variables in some database do not accurately reflect the mosaic of their interests, attributes, and consumer actions.

Don’t ever think that “relationship-marketing” should continue to mean culling consumer mailing segments from a master list and sending each person direct mail with their correct name and address. This is far too simple to be the norm for an actively consuming demographic which feels comfortable opening up to marketers. Encouraging a dual communication strategy in relationship-marketing – based on actively listening and responding to individual consumer voices – is essential to intensify relationships and retain consumers.

And youth will love it.

Seriously. When has a Gen Y not shown an ability to speak their mind? To create something individual? To put their stamp of approval on something? Remember, this is a generation raised by parents that pushed excellence and socialization on kids at a very early age. Giving feedback comes naturally to us.

So let’s call this the “Participation Motivation”. It’s a need to be heard and to be responded to. To be liked and to be given the right rewards. It’s also the cause of a really strong affinity for deep personal interests. For example, I write this blog because I have a strong personal interest in building my brand. We previously discussed Lovemarks and the same guiding principles apply: Gen Y is hardly apathetic about things that interest them and will wax lyrical on brands, issues, people, media, or things that are meaningful to them. Often this is satisfied by forms of creative expression.

And here’s where marketers come in. The good campaigns realize how the concept of ‘participation’ has evolved from providing census-style information to providing first-person insight into their relationship with a brand. It’s like a mass form of focus group research. I really admire the brands which have been able to activate consumers to create ads and commercials for them. It’s terrific word-of-mouth marketing and gets people to reflect on why they are close to a brand. I like to think that this brand reflection mirrors Maslow’s self-actualization stage in the hierarchy of needs!

Who encourages participation: Nike, Obama, Radiohead (first they release the In Rainbows album for free online, then they have a contest for who can create the best music video for each of the songs. Watch the terrific user-gen video for ‘Reckoner’. Great strategy.)



Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

And remember this Super Bowl ad for Tide-to-Go? A consumer created it.



Nick Haley, an Apple fan, created a video commercial for the release of the iPod Touch, it achieved traction on YouTube, and the Apple team actually brought him in and produced his commercial. Impressive!




Who does not encourage participation: Rogers Wireless (how exactly can I develop my relationship with them on a more cerebral level…?), many apparel retailers actually (there’s limited brand development beyond perceptional massaging through mass ads and in-store experience. Room for much more experiential marketing that involves consumer participation)

Youth really do love the brands that are meaningful to them. They’ll engage with those brands in unique and varied ways, for example, adding “Ford Mustang” as a friend on one’s Facebook page….not to suggest anything…

Participation is critical and must be present in every touchpoint with youth consumers. It doesn’t matter whether they love you or hate you – it’s important to get feedback from this vocal and quick-thinking group.

Tomorrow we will examine relevance, my favourite of the four key aspects of marketing to youth.

Marketing to youth: Part 1: INTRODUCTION

I really don’t mean to frequently piss and moan about how marketers just ‘don’t get it’ when trying to connect and build relationships with Gen Y, but it’s a topic I feel really deserves more analysis.

With very rare exception, young consumers will affirm that they are not affected by marketing – that somehow they are able to discern truth from fiction, pitch from pulp, and weed out messages that are irrelevant and uninteresting to them. I’m not disputing that youth are adept colanders of information. Our generation has a remarkable capacity to handle multimedia simultaneously and segment our attention among multiple competing sources. Consider how easily we browse the internet, talk on the phone, on MSN, use Facebook, and watch streaming video at the same time. Marketers have difficulty among this cacophony so the typical response is to scream louder at youth consumers, thus adding to the noise and the overall muting of each marketer’s message.

Hear that humming noise? I know the under-25 readers of this blog hear it. Yeah…it’s the sound of a thousand different marketing messages competing for your attention. No wonder Gen Y considers themselves savvy and selective when it comes to consuming. They are able to pick and choose among an immense spectrum of brands competing for their attention and money. Who’s the boss? You.

So when analyzed in this sense, it’s no wonder that youth consumers think highly of themselves when it comes to knowing what to buy and the perceived insignificant impact that marketing has on them. They are (and always were) the authority on what was bought and what was not.

Now, let’s stop thinking that we’re immune to marketing. Obviously you make one decision over another and one brand out of the 100 competing for your attention ultimately gets it. What has made you select that one company? Is it your friends? Youth consumers are information seekers as much as they are willing participants in a culture of conformity and popularity. They’ll be high frugal and choosy about where to spend dollars, comparing features and specs for many types of products, but they are also highly influenced by friends, perception, and traditional marketing techniques that rely on primacy, recency, and spontaneity.

And what about things we allow into our lives but that we don’t purchase. Those who say marketing is only meant to make us purchase things that we don’t want/need are missing a whole other perspective. What about all the marketing that goes into intangibles: who we vote for, what social causes we get behind, what environmental issues we choose to devote attention to, what neighbourhood in a city we choose to live in, what free online applications we choose to use, what songs we download and don’t pay for, what tv shows we stream, what slang we choose to adopt, what celebrities we identify with, what courses we choose to take in school (yes…industrial and professional associations make big investments into educating and funding school programs so that their profession has a future harvest of labour). How can youth now honestly make the assertion that they are unaffected by marketing?

With that aside, I propose to help articulate some ground rules for defining modern youth marketing. Over the next four days I’ll be writing about four important concepts that are essential for marketers to realistically engage youth consumers:

Tuesday: TRANSPARENCY
Wednesday: PARTICIPATION
Thursday: RELEVANCE
Friday: UNIQUENESS

We’ll look at examples of marketers who have done things right and those who might need a little work.

It’s funny when people say that they are immune to marketing. Maybe they’re immune to screaming advertising, but not marketing. As an eternal optimist, I’d like to believe that a better understanding of how marketing affects Gen Y will ultimately precipitate fewer irrelevant ad blitzes by out-of-touch companies looking to increase market share, but greater tactical executions which companies use to deepen and nurture relationships with their best customers.

Although they’d never admit it, Gen Y customers reflect positively on marketing that is relevant and meaningful to them personally.

Effective email marketing: Doing it right

Saturday is my day to go through the piles of email in my Gmail inbox from the week. I’m glad I did because it made me reflect on some of the best practices of email campaigns. To explain the importance of email marketing, please watch this video from Britney Spears:



(So poignant. Yeah, I couldn't stand to listen to it either...) On with the list of email best practices:

Recipients opt in
I really love email marketing, but for the future, it’s only going to be effective with house-list customers who are already familiar with and trusting of the brand. Purchased lists, unless they’re remarkably high quality leads, run the risk of not only being automatically filtered to spam if the email client is unfamiliar with the sender, but also being passed over and deleted by the recipient who sees it as an irrelevant message.

Key takeaway: Use email for relationship building, not acquisition. Don’t misconstrue ‘cheap’ for ‘effective’ as a driver of overall campaign value.

Test and learn
Campaigns represent opportunities to learn from your customers and solicit valuable data-based information. In addition to the substantial link and segmentation tracking that you’ll no doubt build into the campaign, why not throw in some differentiated layout or subject line testing for good measure! Copy testing is also useful, especially when you can learn whether your email recipients like punchy, ‘header-style’ copy or longer, ‘body-style’. Don’t forget to add another layer of testing and try landing page optimization with an A/B split of the inbound links from the email.

Key takeaway: Emails must always be refreshed and improved (optimized!) to make sure you stay relevant with your customers. Through testing, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.

Offers and giveaways
Response to consumer emails is enhanced by the offer of a special feature or free giveaway. Try a contest or promotion to launch a new product and remember to use this as another opportunity to collect consumer data. Analyze their responses. I like to think of these giveaways as the sizzle to an email. Remember to mention the free giveaway in the subject line – it will draw the greatest possible open rate of any subject line. Incentives work, use them.

Key takeaway: People like free stuff. Give it to them. Email is a perfect way to tell your customers that they are the select few to receive a special offer.

Content optimization
You’ll learn through testing and customer segmentation what content works for what groups of people, however you can’t go wrong by providing lots of information in an easy to digest form. Lists work well, as do quick specs. Ultimately however, your customers will tell you through their clicks what they find attractive and what your client has in the email as filler.

Key takeaway: Short and sweet. Focus the email on communicating information honestly and compellingly. Email is not a good medium in which to be coy or deceptive. You’ll be burned for it.

Channel integration
Email marketing satisfies one component of your overall CRM strategy. Since you’ll likely be using email in combination with other channels (e.g. direct mail, web, in-store, telephone, SMS), make sure that as far as your communication strategy goes, the left hand knows what the right is doing. A little vague I know, let me explain: you know how Aeroplan will send you an email with your updated account balance? Great. How about when American Eagle uses email to notify you of an upcoming online sale at their website? Super.

Key takeaway: Email marketing does not exist in a vacuum. It is an effective component of your overall marketing communication strategy. Effective emails have a high degree of verisimilitude to the consumer’s other experiences with the brand and their account.

So go ahead and call bullshit on all those Nostradamian gurus who question the effectiveness of email as a marketing medium and predict its demise as customers become more selective with their brands. The sophistication of email deployment technology now means that emails are modular and are unique to each recipient. A campaign can have a massive number of permutations depending on the desired segmentation, content inclusion, and testing. When done right, email is a highly cost-effective marketing channel that is perhaps the most poised of any communications media to convey relevance to the customer.

...btw, these were all Britney Spears' thoughts on email, not mine.

AHHHH!!!

Friends, I’m writing to advise you on a serious problem. It’s something that threatens to significantly disrupt and dorkify the way we interact online. The problem is larger than we originally thought and it’s getting much worse every year.

Our parents are going online.

The dangers posed by this threatening situation are clear:

• They can see your history folder
• They can see the pictures of that bong hit you did at that party you can’t remember
• But most importantly, they have the potential to make the internet dull again

As a public service to blog readers, here are some important signals to be aware of. Signs that your boomer parents are learning how to use the internet:

1. They’re picking up your lingo. They no longer say, “I’m going online on the web to surf the internet”. For+UnA+Ely +HEy 5+1LL C4N'T Re4d L33t 5P3@k.

2. They’re surprisingly high-functioning when it comes to executing simple commands. This one scares me because my parents no longer ask questions like “how do I open a website?” or “how do I reply to an email?” However, I am still asked “how do I reload the printer?”

3. They add you on Facebook and expect you to accept their friend request.

4. They have successfully downloaded an attachment from an email. Unfortunately the attachment was 10mb and Windows crashed when attempting to open it

5. They understand that the internet comes through a wire, not magically through the air around us

6. They frequently remark about how web-savvy they are when compared to their other old friends.

7. They no longer harangue you about music and video downloading because they learned it’s ‘not illegal’ in Canada.

8. Through numerous Chris Hansen ‘To Catch a Predator’ Dateline segments they have learned never to enter a chat room or engage in web networking of any kind.

9. They checked the movie listings for the Sex and the City movie online.

10. They have seen a video from YouTube. Fortunately they don’t understand Millenials’ refined sense of humour and didn’t find the video that funny. They will never return to YouTube.

Additional warning signs are explained in a recent emergency report by JWT Boom, an agency specializing in midlife marketing.

You’ve been warned.