Searching For Brand Salvation? Be Strategic, Skeptical

I’ve grown incredibly tired of hearing about the next big thing in marketing. Almost everyone seems to have their own version of snake oil that will magically increase ROI, increase customer engagement, grow consideration levels overnight, or improve the overall image of a brand in just three short weeks. Bad news friends — there is no magic bullet, no tonic or single tool that will fix a brand.

Social media won’t do it, digital won’t do it. Neither will print, mobile, TV, emerging media, gaming or whatever comes next. All those things are tactics. And while brands will toss millions on one or a combination of several of the above, most of them fall short on the most important part of their execution … the strategy.

Instead of simply patching the holes with tactics, wouldn’t it be better to eschew the promises of salvation made by individual practitioners and start thinking more skeptically in regards to your marketing/advertising campaigns? As a content strategist, my favorite question to ask any person in a meeting that brings up a creative concept or suggests the use of some sort of tactic is, “What does that mean to the consumer?”

It seems so simple, but 9 times out of every 10, no one thinks of how creative will ultimately be interpreted by the consumer. Perhaps our biggest challenge as strategists is attempting to persuade a client that we need to talk about our audiences and messages – and ultimately whether we have product or service that satisfies those audiences – before we get anywhere near a tactical discussion.

My recommendation to brands and the content strategists and content planners working for those companies, is to place the greatest amount of initial emphasis on finding out who the customer is.

What do they do? Why do they need your service or product? How do they consume media? What do their activities in social media look like? Develop personas for consumers you’re likely to encounter given the economic and product landscape and then figure out what kinds of messages need to be created to satisfy those minds.

Once we know who they are and we know what we need to say to them, we hopefully have something in our wheelhouse that they give a damn about. Then we can take those learnings to decide what we can do to creatively satisfy them, but whatever we come up with better execute against the strategic thinking we spent all that initial time on.

Social media and emerging media may be all shiny and new, and I’m sure brands have every ‘media expert’ that’s blogging in his or her basement telling them that they need a “Twitter-Strategy” or a “Facebook-Strategy.” That’s a farse.

All the “strategy” in the world won’t mean a thing if your customers aren’t looking for you to be there. Be skeptical, be like Socrates or like your 4-year-old. Ask these so-called experts “Why?” Ultimately, both strategists and brands should be asking the same question, “What are you trying to accomplish?”

“Why do I need to build a Facebook app that lets you change the color of my product and then gives me a badge to annoy their friends? What does this tactic accomplish and how does it support my strategy?”

“Why do I need to ‘tweet’ about my guys who drain septic fields? What does tweeting about that accomplish?”

“Why should I make a mobile game for my family sedan? What does that tactic accomplish?”

Brands get to where they are for a reason. They either have a service or product that satisfies a need or they don’t. All the tactics in the world won’t help boost profitability if they don’t have skeptics to make sure that the tactic is being executed to a strategic umbrella that ultimately influences brand consideration.

It’s time to stop being creative for creativity’s sake and time to start communicating with consumers in the ways they choose.

In short, brands shouldn’t steer away from delivering messaging in print because it’s percieved as a dying art, or put all of their eggs into digital and social baskets because many people access their information in that fashion. It’s about being accessible to all, being strategic with your messaging platforms and spending less and less time focusing on your campaign creative or tactics that may not even be appropriate. What are your thoughts?

Photo: Billie Hara

I’m Not A Social Media Expert And Neither Are You

It seems as if every time I attend a networking event I’m meeting new social media “experts,” “gurus,” “ninjas” and “rockstars.” Quite frankly, I’m not a social media expert, and damn it, neither are you.

Want to know who the real “rockstars” are? They’re people. Real, honest, people; with real, honest faces.

The people who don’t use social media to earn a paycheck are the most valuable voices in the space. And more often than not, they’re the people these self proclaimed “experts” are forgetting about when they make recommendations to companies and brands big and small. There is an infinite problem in measuring your success by the number of tweets you produce daily, the number of friends you were able to corral on Facebook and in the number of referring links you’ve been able to garner. Why? Because more often than not, there is little to no attention paid to whether or not there’s anything worth saying at all and no thought put into what happens once the conversion metric has been satisfied. That comes down to a lack of strategy on the front end.

Kick ass creative? Check. Kick ass social media analytic suite? Check. Kick ass bloggers? Check.

Nothing valuable to say? No plan for what to do with people once you’ve brought them to your site? EPIC FAIL.

I think Joe Pulizzi nails it down perfectly in this post where he says:

Publishing is marketing, marketing is publishing. If we’ve learned anything over the past few years, it’s that the majority of new media marketing efforts rely on a keen understanding of publishing. That means that you (the marketer) need to take your sales and marketing hat off and put on your publishing hat. Instead of features and benefits communication (look at most e-newsletters, which are most times product or offer driven), are you delivering information like a publisher does to readers?

I can’t stress how important this concept is, especially when it comes to sharing your content in the social media space.

Believe me, there’s no way in hell you can consider yourself in expert in understanding something as fluid as the social media space. It changes daily and it gets deeper and deeper by the day. Social media doesn’t have a beginning, an ending or an in between. But if we all begin to start thinking of how we deliver our information on the front end (think about how it’s tagged, the tone you’re presenting it in, who is saying it and why you’re saying it in the first place) and couple it with a strong plan of action once conversion occurs, our content is useful to those swimming in the communication stream and to us, the publisher.

Stop worrying about your ninja skills and start building your strategic muscles. And please, stop calling yourself a guru. It just sounds ridiculous.

Photo: Sanja Gjenero

‘Transformation’ Was A Necessity For Detroit Papers

A little over a week ago the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News made major changes to their product offerings and moved to a limited home delivery.

And while the The Detroit Media Partnership changes are not even a month old, I’m of the opinion that the bold and forward thinking moves that leadership has made are among the most important (if not the most) experiments with journalism going today.

What the Detroit papers have done is revolutionary. It’s a real roll of the dice when it comes to their business models. Where every other newspaper going defunct is moving to an entirely digital approach, slashing its staff and reducing coverage areas, David Hunke and the Media Partnership are staying the course, committed to keeping two newspapers in Detroit, keeping their staffs as robust as possible and continuing the tradition of thorough, deep reporting – and they’re doing it and still PRINTING, 7 days a week.

So why is that such a great thing? The former journalist in me thinks this is the best option, because it provides two different sides to every story, allows Detroit to be one of the few cities in America to provide printed newspapers 7-days a week and keeps the integrity of news intact.

I’m ecstatic there’s still a print edition and two full editorial staffs, because while I’m definitely more of a digital guy, most blogs don’t have the same standards for reporting the news, or industries that journalists do.

Sure, I’ll read Jalopnik for car reviews, some rumor about the auto industry, etc., but those guys just don’t have the connections of the Freep or the News. I want the analysis, journalistic integrity and the experience that those papers bring to the table. Trained journalists are irreplaceable in my humble opinion, and it’s nice to know I can still pick up my copy at a newsstand and hop a plane with it. For me, I still pick up a newstand copy of the paper and use the mobile versions and web sites to consume my news, but there are options for just about EVERY delivery method.

The five major keys to that made this move a good one:

1. Both the Freep and The News are still printing 7 days a week

2. Home delivery still occurs every Thursday, Saturday and Sunday

3. Subscribers have access to an E-Edition, an exact replica of the daily printed edition that features interactive ads and various visual formats

4. Both papers were able to continue their normal publishing cycle and plan with minimal impact to newsroom staff. (Journalists keep their jobs, Detroit continues to be a two newspaper town and journalistic integrity remains intact)

5. Plans were announced to begin delivering the newspaper to the Kindle and a new E-reader device being developed by Plastic Logic. Freep.com, Detnews.com and both newspapers mobile sites remain free of charge.

What remains to be seen is how the papers will react to suggestions of its readers, or if the digital editions will be as consumed as the print editions, but based on some of the commentary I’ve seen, the defectors are more few and far between. I’ll be curious to see if any other major cities follow Detroit’s lead, because I believe the moves are really smart, albeit a bit risky. I’m just glad to know the papers I love didn’t lay down and die a slow and painful death.

Photo: Sanja Gjenero
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In the interest of intellectual honesty and integrity, I’ll go ahead and disclaimer here that the Detroit Media Partnership is one of the clients that my employer represents and that I do work on the account. My opinion and any opinion you see on this blog are certainly not to be considered to be the same of the clients I work with.

Why having great content isn’t enough

More and more I see brand strategists and other thought leaders talking about the importance of having great content on their sites to improve traffic and drive consideration. I’m of the belief that simply isn’t enough. Yes, great content, keyword strings, sound coding and SEO are all really important for getting people to your site. But once they’ve made it to your property, read your pitch and have begun the consideration process, what are you doing to engage them?

And thus, we have to address the dreaded customer relationship marketing thingy. I’m not going to lie to you. I believe most companies flat out suck at this. You might have something that totally interests me. I love what I find on your Web site and you might give me a channel to talk about how much I love both those things, but if you don’t talk back to me and acknowledge the fact that I’ve actually taken the time to give you my feedback, I won’t interact with your site again or bother to respond to your survey etc. And it’s in that assurance that you’ll converse with me that perhaps the most important key to blogging comes out: Establishing Trust.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a top 10, top 5 or even a top 2 list of ways to guarantee that people visiting your site will trust you. It’s a subjective thing, and damn is it ever frustrating when you can’t establish it. Building Trust with readership takes time. You have to be absolutely congruent with what you’re writing about and when you do converse with readers/consumers, you have to be and portray yourself as a person of authenticity and character. Even more difficult is getting those readers to perceive you as such and then connect with it.

Yes, you’ll fail. You’ll piss some people off and yes, a lot of people simply may not enjoy the person who happens to be the voice for your product, service or brand. But if you’re not interacting with consumers to make the attempt to build trust, you’re falling into the old way of marketing… shouting from the rooftops until someone hears you, blind to the fact that you have absolutely no real control about what people perceive your brand to be without talking honestly with them about it. If you go that route, let me know how that works out for you.

Photo: Dora Pete

Big media and the need for content sharing

When I was still a wet nosed reporter (which was only in 2003 mind you), I would have told you that you were insane if you were claiming that traditional media would die out before I did. Then again, this was before iPods had video and WiFi capabilities, before Facebook and Twitter and before Google News.

Fast forward a few years and it’s a whole new ballgame. Newspapers are cutting staffs, magazines are calling it a day and headlines are being broken by Twitter users and bloggers far faster than the traditional media and it’s so-called 24-hour newscycle. The rise of the blogosphere, social networking and changing consumer attitudes have turned content production on its head. And if newspapers and magazines don’t make adjustments, pool their resources and begin listening as much as their shouting, the death rattle will be coming sooner than later.

Content sharing isn’t a new idea by any means. I grew up in Detroit, and remember when the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press published a single joint weekend edition between 1998 and May of 2006. Prior to that, the News and Freep entered into a Joint Operating Agreement on the business operations side of the shops to cut cost as part of the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970. They are one of the few sets of papers in joint operating agreements that ever shared content.

But the current economic atmosphere, rising newsprint costs and increases in online readership are forcing papers to look at these sharing partnerships yet again.

Last December, The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun announced that they would enter a content-sharing arrangement, and just two weeks ago, The Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram announced plans share sports coverage.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say we’ll continue to see this trend in newspaper publishing. The question we need to start answering is, when will this begin occurring in the magazine, tabloid or even digital industries?

I think the overwhelming answer is probably sooner than later.

As this PR Week media analysis points out, magazines like AdWeek, BrandWeek and MediaWeek (all Nielsen Media titles), began sharing content in October of 2008. The company points out in the news release that less than 2% of subscribers for the publications, which cover overlapping industries, receive all three titles.

Still, the unfortunate reality is that magazines need to begin examining sharing content with rival publishers, as some of the aforementioned newspapers have done. But there is a particular challenge in that experiment because newspaper content sharing (usually) has the advantage of regional play, or, as we see in the Star-Telegram/Morning News arrangement, the advantage of only sharing sections. Magazines are much more topic-focused, making cannibalizing of issues a given. And where do you make the call on which writers to keep, what sort of voice to carry forward?

Unfortunately, as the PR Week article points out, it’s a “murky” proposition, but one that I believe will be absolutely necessary for the survival of even the most storied titles in the annuls of media history. What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you ever see major media magazines or blogs sharing their content? Could Newsweek and Time one day share stories? I’m curious as to your thoughts.

Photo by : Sanja Gjenero