Influential Marketing Blog

8 Marketing Lessons From "The Rescue"

On April 25th, tens of thousands of people across the world "abducted themselves" as part of "The Rescue" in a show of support for the child soldiers that have been recruited over the past 20+ years as part of the conflict in Uganda and neighboring countries. The documentary has spawned several interesting real life advocacy events, and I have written about them before on this blog. What's different this time around is that Twitter and Facebook have both become far more dominant as means of communication for many socially active people. "#therescue" was a trending topic on Twitter for much of the weekend and continues to stay in a the Top 5 spot even as the threat of #swineflu remains a hot online topic.

As I watched the video and thought about the marketing of this campaign, it was clear there are many lessons to learn from the web component of this campaign. Rather than share them in a blog post, I decided to put together a short presentation that you can download and share. As you take an inside look at some of the choices this campaign made to be successful, I hope you'll consider not just supporting their effort, but passing this presentation to somone else who could benefit from the lessons, as well as spread the word about the campaign:

View more presentations from rohitbhargava.

How To Cost Less Without Lowering Your Price

Do you know how much your product or service costs? Hint: it's not the price you are asking for it. In global warming terms, environmental cost is commonly referred to as a "footprint." Most people understand that an environmental footprint of a product or company isn't just about the manufacturing, but also the process of shipping, importing, exporting, packaging, and eventually even the use of that product.

When it comes to how much you cost - why not think of your business that way? Your real cost to your customers isn't just the product they buy or the service they use. It's the time they need to spend waiting in line to get it. It's the effort that it takes to load it into their car. It's all the fields they need to fill out online in order to get a "free" username and account. It's the number of times you force them to change their password and remember a new one in the name of security. These are all costs. Not in terms of dollars, but in terms of time.

How can you cost less without lowering your price? Lower the time that it takes for your customers to interact with you. Make buying easier and faster. Let them go for longer without seeing you. Sometimes, the less interaction you force a customer to have with you, the more satisfied they are. Here's a good example - over time, people are more likely to love their car if they have never gone into the dealer to get it fixed ... not because they got an extra $1000 cash back when they bought it. So forget about lower your prices in a recession or trying the "two-for-one-special" mode of thinking. Focus on being easier to do business with and take less time from your customers' schedule. It will pay off.

When Conversation Doesn't Matter

People who work in social media spend a lot of time talking about conversation. We (I include myself in this category) talk about having a dialogue with customers, about encouraging two way interactions and generally being more open with how business communicates. But does the weary business traveller finally arriving at her hotel after a long flight really want a conversation? What about the embarassed boyfriend who is sent to the all night pharmacy to pick up feminine hygene products for his girlfriend? Or a mother trying to quickly finish an errand before a sleeping baby wakes up?

The point is, there are many valid business situations where a conversation is actually the last thing a customer wants. All the examples I used above are real life situations, of course, but are there similar situations online? Here are three common ones:

1. Price comparison (using comparison engines to find the best price online for something)
2. Bill paying and online services (financial accounts, egovernment tasks, etc.)
3. Time sensitive information seeking (such as movie or flight times)

There can still be an important role for social media to play in each of these situations, but if it is focused on generating conversations, it is likely to fall short. The lesson in this is that conversation shouldn't be a blind ambition with social media, but rather an end that you seek strategically ... and one that you are willing to leave behind when it seems ill advised or just plain wrong.

5 Provocative Questions In Digital Advocacy From Changemakers

On Friday last week I had a chance to attend a "charrette-style" unconference called Changemakers put on by the University of California - Santa Barbara and their Center for Information Technology and Society. The attendees included people from the Sierra Club, MoveOn.org, Deloitte, Stanford, and thinkers like my friend and fellow Zero G buddy Doc Searls and organizer Dave Toole from OutThink. The day was focused on digital advocacy and the role of social media in furthering cause based communications.

As is sometimes the case with more discussion based conferences, I found the day raised more provocative questions than it answered. Sometimes it is the questions, however, that lead to the newest thinking, so I thought for a recap post I would share some of the biggest questions to arise in the hopes that they may spark a wider discussion:

Q - Does conversation online cause more noise than action?
A - This was the big question that came up early in the event and judging from a few responses to the question I saw over Twitter people feel pretty strongly about the relationships between the two. For my part, I think that conversations do play an important role in sparking action, even though it may sometimes be difficult to attribute some of that action directly back to the right people.

Q - Is an effort successful if it achieves it's aim, but without your getting credit for it?
A - Perhaps at the heart of this question is one of belief. Do you believe so strongly in the cause that you want it to succeed at any cost, or is the credit and visibility for yourself and your organization as important. This, I think, will continue to be a key question as we deal with the rise of the "blego" (blog ego) and newly minted online superstars every hour.

Q - What if our demographic doesn't use computers or social media?
I see this point coming up often in meetings both related to digital advocacy as well as campaigns in other industries - often targeted at older audiences. It is something of a false question, because often it is based on an assumption that simply doesn't hold true about how many people in that group are actually online. This is one of the fastest growing segments online and will likely continue to be in the coming years.

Q - How can the leadership of a community authentically claim to speak for a group?
This was a common question that came up from those who had organized groups online and now wanted to be sure that they were, as an organization, accurately reflecting viewpoints of those in the group. My advice on this point was to be sure that you were looking at whether a group was formed by affinity or demographic before making assumptions. A group of college students who are in the same graduating class may not believe in the same causes. If they have gathered to support an issue, however, then you can more easily speak for the group.

Q - What causes must be institutionalized and cannot be furthered by individuals?
One particularly eye opening moment for me at the event was when the conversation turned to causes where people affected by them cannot mobilize on their own. One example of this is homelessness, which required a coordinated effort in order to attack it. It also is an important reminder that no single strategy can work for every cause.

What do you think about these questions? Any big ones you would add?

The Personality Project: Women of Personality

There are generally three kinds of ideas. The most popular two are the ones that you act on right away and those that you never do anything about. Those are the majority. Most of us love the third kind. Those are the ideas that are too big or complex or important to do quickly, but that you simply cannot let die because of how you feel about them. Today I finally launched that kind of idea. Since Personality Not Included came out about a year ago - I have been getting emails from people sharing their experience with the book and how they felt about it's main premise that businesses (like people) need to have a strong and authentic personality.

Soon after the book launched, I noticed that many of these emails were coming from women working in professional roles and those that had started their own businesses. These female entrepreneurs were responding to the message of personality in a way that I didn't expect. So since that moment I started thinking about bringing those voices together. Of course, part of the reason would be to promote my book ... but like most authors the important thing for me was for my idea to find a home and actually help people change their careers or make their business more successful.

So today, you can download a free ebook called "The Personality Project: Women of Personality." It is an extension of a site that I launched some time ago with a similar mission - to get visionary people in many industries to talk about why personality matters. This ebook features 20 business women that I respect and admire who each agreed to share their story as part of the ebook. These include founders and CEOs, best selling authors, popular bloggers and online personalities and even the first woman to ever row solo across the Atlantic Ocean (and she's now making her way across the Pacific).

See the ebook embedded below and click on it to download a free PDF copy:

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Books marketing blogs

Once you get a chance to read it, please visit each of the contributors sites and blogs, buy their books and support their efforts. The best thing you can do is to validate their ideas and use their examples to improve your own business and your career. And then let them know they made a difference.

PS - If you mention this ebook on your blog or twitter or facebook or anywhere else online, use the tag #wop (on Twitter) or "WOP" (anywhere else) as this is the one that all the contributors will be watching and responding to.

5 Ways TurboTax Is Reinventing Tax Day With Social Media

If you are among the millions of Americans dreading the next few days until April 15th, you are not alone. Tax season is upon us and as every form of media conspires to remind you of the significance of Wednesday, whether you do your own taxes or not, you are likely feeling some pressure. In this midst of this 1099-imposed national rise in stress, TurboTax (a leading self-service software solution to do your own taxes) is finding their authenticity through social media and helping to reduce (if not to remove) the stress involved in these last few days of taxes.

TurboTax has been pioneering in their use of the web for several years now, using crowdsourcing to let people answer one another's questions at every step of the tax process and offering integration between financial systems to move tax information around - but this year they are using Facebook, Twitter and Myspace to help them not just stand out as a tax software solution, but to reinvent many American's experience of tax day in the process. Here are a few unexpected things they are doing - mostly powered by social media:

1. Understanding the urge to procrastinate. Let's face it, social media tools and sites offer just about the best distraction you can think of to avoid doing your taxes. Rather than offering a guilt trip on why we need to refocus on our taxes, TurboTax has a contest called the "Super Status Challenge" so you can waste time on your social media sites answering challenge questions (where your answer needs to include the word TurboTax), while still remaining somewhat connected to your taxes. And instead of offering relatively useless prizes, like free product ... they have a smart partnership with NBC to let people win dream trips to meet casts and crews of some of the most popular shows on the network. The whole campaign is like putting a sandbox in the classroom. We play a little, and (hopefully) get back to work.
2. Talking like a human. From the first moment you log into TurboTax and are asked to agree to a legal message because their "lawyers made them do it," you don't have the sense that you're entering into a serious financial transaction. You are about to give TurboTax what may be the most sensitive financial data you own, and they are not weighed down with the perceived need to take you through thousands of words of legal disclaimers. This dedication to using natural language instead of legal mumbo-jumbo is carried through the entire site, which makes you thankful they seem to have hired copywriters in place of lawyers to write the content on each page of the site.
3. Offering you a friend at a tough time. For many people, tax season seems like a time when the government is out to get you. It is the ultimate of an "us versus them" kind of situation, though arguably it should not be. At a time like this, you need a friend in the business, and that's what TurboTax wants to be. The site will offer helpful suggestions, guide you through every deduction and help you keep more of that money you worked so hard for.
4. Allowing people to share the lesson they just learned. Doing your taxes every year is a bit like a treasure hunt. You learn new tricks, techniques and answers every year. As you do it, you get smarter about what is possible - and sometimes you can apply those lessons to next year. The other benefit of this, however, is that there is always going to be someone who has just learned the lesson you need to learn, or has the perfect answer to your question. Rather than assuming their own staff will have all the answers, as many customer service teams try to do, TurboTax has a robust community that lets anyone answer anyone else's question. Combined with many of their own moderators, it is a powerful way offer a support group for people as they do their taxes.
5. Answering the unanswerable questions (in a way that actually makes sense). Pages of frequently asked questions are good, but the toughest questions are not frequently asked - and if they are, they are answered in a way that is nearly incomprehensible. If two unmarried people buy a house together, who gets the new $8000 homebuyer credit? You can imagine this question coming up for someone, but not among any list of frequently asked questions. TurboTax answers this very question on their blog, and has many such blog posts aimed at big tax questions like this. Sometimes you need more than 140 characters to explain something well. The TurboTax blog is a great resource that aims to do that.

Take all these tools together, and you'll see how TurboTax is taking a nationally reviled day and making it a little bit easier to get through.

Interview: Personal Branding For The Millennial Generation

If there is one thing you can learn from Dan Schawbel, it's how to choose a niche and own it. He's a 20-something social media consultant for EMC as his day job, but over the past several years he has focused his blog and extracurricular work on becoming a personal branding expert for the millennial generation. In that time, he's launched a magazine, written a blog and even created his own awards for personal branding, which was when I first connected with him.

His first book, titled Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success came out this week where he shares his lessons for creating a strong personal brand and the impact it can have on your career. In this interview he shares some insights from the book and offers an inside look at his path to where he is today.  It's a story worth paying attention to.

1. Why is a personal brand so important to someone just starting out in their career?

A personal brand is inescapable and inevitable, whether you're a high school student, CEO or consultant.  We've already been branded by many people without even realizing it.  The three reasons why every has a brand are that we are constantly being judged based on first impressions, we have to sell ourselves in order to accomplish anything and because we can adopt the same branding strategies that companies or products use.

When you're just starting out in your career, you have the opportunity to define your brand before others do it for you.  In Me 2.0, the first step in the personal branding process is called "discover your brand."  Without investing time in figuring out who you are, what you're capable of, what you're passionate about and establishing goals, you're truly lost.  The sooner you can get a grip on what your brand is, and how you want to position yourself in the marketplace, the more time you'll have to prepare for the real world if you're a college student and the less time you'll waste jumping from one career path to the next aimlessly.

2. Do you always need to know what you want to do in life in order to have a strong personal brand?

Rohit, understanding your brand is mandatory for your business success and overall happiness.  Being able to align your passion with expertise in a specific area is the key to living a great life.  Passion is the fuel that will push you through adversity and expertise allows you to fulfill customer needs (clients, teachers, etc).  The value you provide is a reflect of your brand and the reputation you build up by providing that value over the course of time, is what will allow you to become more successful.  Without cementing your brand in the first place, you'll waste your time on social networks, a blog, on a resume, etc.  Everyone needs to be able to write their own personal brand statement, which consists of "what you do" and "who you serve," and it better be a niche if you want to stand out among everyone else.

3. How do you effectively balance your work in building your own brand with your day job at EMC?

EMC has supported me from day one actually.  They've give me some additional flexibility to speak to organizations, colleges and to appear in the media on various occassions.  I'm in a very interesting situation because I was recruited by EMC, after being a product markter for a little over a year, for a brand new position that I got to co-create with the PR organization, called "social media specialist."  I've become the go-to-person for social media at EMC, so I get to work on some amazing projects, such as blogs, social media press releases and our various social accounts.  There is a mutual agreement and kinship between EMC and I, where EMC's brand helps build my credibility and in return, I help advance the brand with new social technologies.

I don't believe in work/life balance at all.  I think our professional and personal lives are converging as such a fast pace, that it's gauranteed that there will be no separation in the future.  I was telling a bunch of college seniors today at Boston University that when they enter the workforce, their co-workers and management will be friending them on Facebook.  Everyone just has to be wiser on how they support and project a positive personal brand.  Being associated with other brands means you have to think twice before you update Twitter or your Facebook status.

I put in over 100 hours of work a week.  I would say at least 50 hrs for EMC and at least 50 hrs for my other projects, such as my blog, magazine, and book.

4. Before getting the book deal, you launched your own blog and magazine. What did you learn from those experiences that helped you when it came to writing a book?

Rohit, this is a great question.  The second I launched my Personal Branding Blog back in March of 2007, was when I started marketing Me 2.0, without even knowing I was goin to write it.  The blog has build a solid reputation over time, being the #1 job blog by Careerbuilder last year and an AdAge top blog, like you have. Both the blog and magazine are assets that have thousands of subscribers each.  When the book came out, I notified subscribers of both, in addition to the rest of my marketing plan, that the book was available.  The blog and the magazine qualified the buyers of the book because they were interested in personal branding.  Each asset that I own helps promote another asset that I own.  It's one big happy family!

5. What is the biggest lesson college students usually take away from your presentations?

The main theme of my presentation and Me 2.0 is "command your career."  It's the idea that college students need to take ownership of their career and stop relying on everyone else to drive it.  Instead of being in the passenger seat, it's time to take the wheel and press on the gas.  At the end of the day, career success or failure lies in their hands.  They shouldn't be what their parents or teachers want them to be.  Brand YOU is independent.  "Command your career" was my books original title because it was the feeling I had after I was recruited based on my passion.  Instead of being asked to do things, people were coming to me for expertise in social media.

6. Now that you have a book out and are doing all this speaking, what's next for you?

I need to unwind a little because I'm very stretched right now and it's probably not healthy.  I have to take a hard look at everything I'm doing and focus on the areas that will help me the most.  I'm also thinking of writing another book for a different age group on the topic of personal branding.  I'll continue speaking to gain more experience and I'll continue to think of new theories and applications, while keeping up-to-date with technology.  I have a plan, sure, but things are so unpredictable that it's hard to be specific.  My end goal with the book (and in life) is to get every college onboard to have a personal branding course.

6 Ways Ford Is Finding Its Own Voice

Yesterday evening I co-hosted a tweetup in New York City where Ford was unveiling the new Ford Fiesta and a brilliantly conceived social media program to get 100 influencers to take the car on an extended test drive for 6 months as part of the Ford Fiesta Movement. The event was a gathering designed to help put a more human face on Ford and talk about a new Ford car that many of the 20 and 30 somethings who showed up (and are the target market for the Fiesta) may not have known about.

The effort is just one example of a greater shift that has been taking place at Ford over the past year as the company has worked to not only reshape its image in the eyes of the American public, but also to change the way that they tell the story of Ford. It is a rich story to tell, one that is linked to the history of America in a way that few companies can authentically claim. And despite being in the maligned automotive industry that seems a permanent fixture in the negative news cycle, things are changing at Ford. How are they managing to do it? Here are six elements to consider:

1. Having a strong story to tell. In the midst of all the scrutiny, Ford is (and has been) shifting their image from stodgy truck maker to a more forward thinking company making cars that the American public actually want to drive. The relaunched Taurus was a hit, winning top safety ratings - the Flex has had rave reviews, and other cars like the Fusion and Focus are winning many fans.
2. Tapping the passion of employees. Ford has always described itself as a family, and employees often demonstrate a stunning loyalty to the company ... even describing themselves in terms of the cars they have always driven. The old mode of communications would be to keep all these voices silent, and instead only authorize a small group of people to speak on behalf of Ford. Today many of these voices are being encouraged to speak and share their thoughts and experiences online.
3. Making a commitment to social media. Social media has played a big part in this evolution to using the voices of "accidental spokespeople." Scott Monty was hired nearly a year ago as the Head of Social Media for Ford and has actively been offering a voice to the brand and adding social media as a core element of all their communications.
4. Getting out of Detroit. One of the most powerful effects of this shift has been a willingness for even the most senior members of the management team at Ford to get out of Detroit and meet customers. Ford's President of the Americas, Mark Fields and Ray Day (the VP of Communications) even came to the Tweetup last night. Alan Mullaly, CEO of Ford showed up to a blogger event during the Consumer Electronics Show (in a sweatshirt instead of a suit and tie!) and stayed graciously for nearly an hour answering questions and doing podcast interviews.
5. Capitalizing on being Ford. There are not many companies that are as visibly at the epicenter of the American economy as Ford is. Like it or not, the success or failure of Ford is seen by many as a symbol of the success or failure of America. From a communications point of view, this is a major positive ... for the simple reason that the fate of Ford matters to people in a way that AIG or Enron just don't (unless you're a shareholder, of course)
6. Overcoming the American ego. One of the most interesting things for me has been Ford's recent willingness to take cars that have been huge commercial successes overseas and introduce them to the United States market (like the Fiesta and the Transit Connect). For many years, most of Detroit would never have considered taking these foreign cars and allowing them to be revised and sold in America. Finally ego and turf wars are taking a back seat to solid business decisions and introducing cars best suited to succeed.

Any other lessons you think Ford has learned which are contributing to their growing reputation?  Or if you think one (or all) of my points are completely off base, leave a comment and share that point of view too.

Disclaimer: I currently work for Ogilvy and Ford is a client of our team. The Ford Fiesta Tweetup was an official party organized as part of our efforts with Ford and I was on the team that helped organize these events. I have NOT been paid or compensated by Ford to write this blog post, though - and the opinions I share in this post are my personal views only and don't represent what Ogilvy, WPP or Team Detroit thinks about Ford.

Marketing To The Social Media Reverb

About six months ago in the NY Times, Clive Thompson published "The Brave New World Of Digital Intimacy" - one of the most brilliant explorations of the cultural context of social media written to date (and well worth a read if you have not yet seen it). In the article, he talked about the idea of virtual connectedness and how our "ambient awareness" of all that our friends and family are doing is helping us to grow closer to one another, and perhaps become more self aware of ourselves in the process.

Among the more inspired parts of the article was when he described every piece of social information as "little snippets coalesce[ing] into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting." As each of us creates this painting, we are sharing the combination of information that helps anyone in our social network to know us better. The interesting extension of this idea is that we are also creating a "reverb" with all that we do.

A reverb (or reverberation) is typically used to describe sound - or more specifically the instance where a sound continues despite the original source of the sound being removed. Extended beyond sound, the idea of a social media reverb is that every action in social media is not just done, but also broadcast across a particular individual's social graph online. The newsfeed on Facebook is an example of this, as it not only announces life changes and hourly moods, but also whether someone is going to an event or not and what groups or causes someone supports. On Twitter, who you follow and retweeting posts are further examples of this concept. There are even tools like MyBlogLog that you can join in order to broadcast and share each time you visit and read a particular blog.

What does this mean for your brand? In social media marketers are often tempted to think in terms of absolutes ... either a blogger writes about your campaign or cause - or they don't. What the social media reverb should teach you is that every action, from declining an event invite on Facebook (but still broadcasting it to your friends) to just visiting and reading your blog (without leaving a comment) has value. In a world where we are enjoying ambient awareness of one another's lives, one reason for any brand to engage with social media should be the opportunity to stand out as part of that ambiance.

The Real Joke About Marketing: Lack Of Integration

Yesterday I made a joke. It was April Fool's Day and in my April 1st blog post I decided to announce that I would only focus on the "right now" and devote my blog to talking about Twitter. Some people got the joke, while others loved the idea of another blog about Twitter. My point from the beginning of that post was entirely truthful - there is indeed something amiss in the world of marketing. And it cannot be solved by focusing just on what's happening right now, or by focusing on any one tool.

There is a plague facing the marketing world today, and it has to do with lack of integration. Strategy, advertising, PR, direct, interactive, social media, search, and many other marketing functions are all separated by departments or outsourced to a combination of agencies. In each case, internal or external political battles over budget and responsibilities ensue, and the end result is usually a marketing impasse at the expense of effectiveness. Not only does the right hand of a marketing group often not know what the left hand is doing - most of the time they end up arm wrestling.

The mission of this blog will always be to share useful marketing lessons and stories that go beyond just one tool, channel or category. The real power of marketing comes through integration, and the tragedy is how easy that is to forget. So the next time you hear someone suggest a Twitter strategy without talking about anything else around it, don't accept it. Seek more integration and demand it from the people you work with. Here are some tips on how to do it:

1. Think in terms of hubs and extensions instead of single channels for a marketing effort.
2. Respect the fact that marketing tactics you may not understand can actually work as well.
3. Make integration someone's job to manage and ensure that it happens.
4. Stop thinking of media consumption as an "either-or situation" - most people use multiple types
5. Have consumers settle disagreements - ask them what is more important and focus there.

Now I can officially put the "twinfluential marketing blog" to rest.