Influential Marketing Blog

30 Second Book Review: Resonate - Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences

Who has time to read books? We all should, but it's tough to know what is worth reading. Each week, this blog will spotlight a new book relevant for marketers or people in business with ideas worth learning and sharing. Through a combination of a personal interview with the Authors, and short review - you'll get the basic premise of the book and why you might want to read it. To recommend a book to be featured, send an email pitch to influentialmarketing@gmail.com.

This week's featured book is Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences, a visually driven guide to creating compelling stories through presentations from one of the most well known communication consultants in the world.

THE INTERVIEW (Thoughts from Nancy Duarte):

1. What inspired you to write Resonate?

There are three components of a presentation: content, slides and delivery. My first book slide:ology covered the visual components of a story but I realized that even though readers learned how to craft attractive slides, their content was still a mess. No matter how attractive the slides are, if the content is still bad, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. So, I set out to uncover why only a few presentations are riveting, while the rest are boring. I knew that there had to be an underlying narrative structure to presentations that hold the rapt attention of an audience. I studied literature and cinema plus studied the transcriptions of great presentations and believe I have uncovered a hidden pattern that the greatest communicators have unknowingly used for years.

2. What is the big idea of the book?

The underlying theme of the book is persuasion. At the core, the only reason we present is to persuade. The book will walk you through a process of brainstorming ideas that support your Big Idea, define the journey you want the audience to go on and then build a presentation that gets them to adopt your perspective, buy your products, or invest in your company…whatever it is you’re persuading them to do. Resonate reveals a way of creating presentation content that germinates from story structures and frameworks instead of a document mindset. Central themes of the book are that the audience is the hero and the presenter is the mentor.

3. Who is the perfect person to read this book?

The book appeals to anyone who communicates (and particularly persuades) on a regular basis. I’ve been getting feedback that it works beyond just a presentation, it works for all types of communication.

THE 30 SECOND REVIEW (Why You Should Read It):

Ever since finding Nancy's first book, slide:ology, I have been a big fan of her work and thinking - using the book to create a visual presentation for PNI and also assigning it as required reading for a Masters level Global Communications class I teach at Georgetown University. While slide:ology was very focused on the principles of creating a great presentation, this book is described in her own words as a "prequel" because of its focus on how to create a compelling story instead of just offering best practices on how to share it. As a communicator who does both on stage presentations and works on creating compelling markting strategy through storytelling for clients, I found Nancy's framework to be both simple and useful. While some of her observations like "the audience is the hero" and the need to "create common ground" may seem like obvious suggestions - the way she packages these truths with the teaching style of a storyteller in the book makes them actionable. Ultimately, as she also shares in the book - there is "always room to improve" and she manages to follow her own advice in this second book by thinking outside the slides. Even if all your presenting is done with powerpoint, focusing on the story instead of the slides is the real secret to being a compelling presenter and communicator. Resonate is a brilliant guidebook to help you get there.  (Review written by Rohit Bhargava)

LINKS AND MORE INFORMATION:

Official Book Website: http://www.duarte.com/books
Author's Website: http://blog.duarte.com

REVIEW PHILOSOPHY (Why This Review Matters):

All the books that are reviewed in this series are worth your time. That's why you won't find any negative book reviews on this blog. As a Author myself, I have hundreds of book on my shelf and have researched hundreds more. I get many invitations to preview books and choose just one every week to share here on this blog. Read my other book reviews at http://www.rohitbhargava.com/book-reviews/.

Why Your Business Needs Social Media Geeks As Customers

This post is republished from my original article published on the Amex Open Forum website. It is part of "Small Business Friday" on this blog, where I share ideas and marketing techniques specifically to help small businesses stand out. To read more articles like this, visit the "Small Business Friday" category on this blog.

There is a generally accepted statistic in the online world that points to an average of about 1% of any population will be active content creators, 9% will be participants and the other 90% will simply "consume" that content online. If you believe those numbers, then the easy conclusion is to say that 1% is so insignificant that to focus on reaching individuals who fit into this category would just be foolish. In fact, your small business should ask just the opposite question ... how many of this 1% can you make into your customers?

Why does this matter so much? Because these individuals are the ones who are actively creating the content that others online will be reading. If you are a contractor, this 1% are the group that will post a review about your services on Angie's List. If you have a retail destination, this 1% will announce they are at your store on Foursquare, blog about it afterwards and post reviews and photos online.

They are an army of online sharers, and they have a few traits in common. They tend to be highly connected with the web and mobile devices, though not always technical. A social media geek could just as easily be a young single male twenty-something programmer, or a married mom with 3 kids in her 40s. The social media geek isn't like your usual technology geek. They aren't turned on by technology for technology's sake ... instead they use social media as an extension of their lives and their experiences. They live an amplified life through social media where they can connect with an entire circle of friends and connections who may not necessarily be in the same physical location as they are.

And they are vital to your business because they can apply their amplified voices to help promote what you do. Chances are, you already have a few of these types of customers, but one important ingredient in better selling your business online is to get as many of these people to be fans of your business as you can. Here are 5 techniques to help you do it:

1. Ask customers to share and offer exclusives. If there is one prevailing truth about any blogger who happens to be your customer, it is that he or she would love to tell you about their blog and love even more to be treated somehow specially because of it. So start with a simple question and ask your customers to share with you if they have a blog and what it is. This may be as easy as adding a field to any online registration forms. Aside from blogs, you can also ask a similar question about whether they are on Facebook or Twitter and ask them to join a page that you have set up for your business where they can get some exclusive information or offers.
2. Let them know what to link to. Anytime anyone is posting content about your business online, they will usually look for a link to share online about your business. If you don't actively share the best URL you want to promote for your business, chances are they will just use a search engine and use all kinds of different sites, including some that may not be your company site at all, but rather a blog post or media article about your business that shows up on search. The more people you can get linking to one URL, the better your site will do on search engine searches, so this should matter to you.
3. Support meetups, conferences and groups. In most cities, social media related groups such as the Social Media Club usually put on events and hold gatherings to help people connect with one another in real life. Aside from likely finding many consultants who might be great options to work with to do something broader for your small business, these can be great networking events to introduce your business to social connected people who mostly based in your local area. They may visit your establishment themselves, or just share with others that they spoke with you. Either way, having a chance to make real face to face connections with social media geeks in your area can be invaluable as you work towards promoting your business.
4. Follow a "one-a-day" contact strategy. Launching a broad "outreach" campaign seems daunting and most likely won't be in your near term plans, but what if you could do that on a smaller scale. When it comes to social media geeks, one fact of life about them is that they are usually very easy to find and contact through online channels. These are the people who have public Twitter accounts, and who usually share some sort of email address or contact form through their blog. If you could just find one person per day to connect with and share your story about your small business, after several months you would have an arsenal of relationships that could go a long way towards sharing your business with the world.
5. Build a social media foundation for your business. Many of the tactics above are things you could try without necessarily being very active in social media for your business directly. At some point, however, you will likely want to complete the picture and build a presence for your business on all the main social media sites. This is just a beginning, so don't be put off by the amount of work that this seems like. Creating a Facebook page for your business can be done in less than 30 minutes, and having a Twitter account in even less. It is important to try and share content as frequently as you can on these channels, but don't let that hold you back from at least starting them and working on using them.

What's Next For The World's Biggest Virtual Earthquake Drill?

On October 21st of this year, nearly 8 million people across California dove under desks, strapped large appliances to the walls and participated in what could easily be called the largest virtual event of the year - if not the decade. It was called The Great Shakeout, an annual earthquake simulation that for the first time invited people all across the state of California to train themselves and their families on how to react to an earthquake hitting the region.

If you were outside of California, chances are you didn't hear much about this event ... but within the state it was actively promoted and just under 8 million people (nearly 25% of the population of the state) registered to participate in the virtual earthquake drill. Online there was a wealth of information on how to prepare yourself, your family and your workplace for the possibility of an earthquake. The campaign had Twitter and Facebook accounts set up and featured advertising and promotion within the state of California as well.

As interesting of an experiment as this was, I can't help but wonder how this simulated event might have become even more powerful of a training exercise if California had managed to find a way to get the significant population of social media entrepreneurs and social networks based in California involved. Sites might have stopped working for a minute during the earthquake - simulating disrupted network cables. Broadcast alert messages might have gone out to test the capacity of the networks to see if they could handle the surge in traffic as people got and shared these alerts.

When it comes to a natural disaster in a place like America, the potential physical destruction could be vast - but the distruption in communication and uncertainty of what happened to friends and loved ones is can be much more devastating. Municipalities and utilities certainly have their own internal preparations for how they might handle a natural disaster, but how can we solve this second challenge?

Here's just one idea: Solar Powered Photo Kiosks. One of the biggest communications challenges in a disaster is being able to quickly and easily distribute information to friends and family about who is ok and where they are. Having reinforced earthquake proof kiosks around cities where people could go to get their photo taken and upload brief biographical details about themselves, their location and their physical condition could create an on-the-ground disaster registry similar to the type of tool that several people created in response to the Haiti earthquake to help family and loved ones to locate one another.

The Great Shakeout raised awareness across California and got people to participate in a real life simulation to practice their response behaviours. Next year, if the state can add a way to also use this moment to practice how its own virtual and real life response might happen - it could really be the most complete virtual disaster simulation in the world ... and continue to be something that states and countries across the world would watch and learn from.

The Pink Backlash: Is There Such A Thing As Too Much Awareness?

This weekend I watched NFL football players with pink shoes ferociously attack each other. At every break, TV ads for all kinds of brands used varying shades of pink for the same cause. On my flight yesterday, as the cabin crew on my Delta flight checked our tickets, they were adorned with pink scarves and ribbons. This is October in America, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and pink is everywhere.

As a marketer, it is easy to love the multi-tiered campaign that has hundreds of brands (large and small) involved in using the color pink to represent support for Breast Cancer research, the women who are fighting the disease and the ones who have survived it. Based on the sheer volume of partners involved, this awareness campaign already occupies a unique place in the recent history of advocacy marketing and has inspired countless other advocacy groups and organizations to strive towards creating their own "pink-esque" campaigns.

When I looked at this campaign back in October of last year, I created a presentation to share some reasons why I thought (and still think) it was so effective, but also included a caution about how the campaign had already started to show signs of overexposure and a potential for losing its authenticity due to a sort of "pink overload" that may happen as more and more companies jumped on the bandwagon.

Last week I gave a phone interview to a reporter for a sports magazine who subsequently came out with a piece titled "We'll be the bad guys -- we hate pink."  In his piece, he shares the cynical view that the average NFL fan is getting overloaded by the healthy dose of pink on everything from uniforms to hand towels. Is it all too much?

Where is the imaginary line between softly cajoling or convincing and full on yelling? The Pink campaign may occupy a unique place not only for its pervasiveness, but also for the chance that it offers for marketers so focused on generating awareness to shift the conversation towards effectiveness instead. No one can argue the Pink campaign has not been successful in raising awareness of breast cancer and (hopefully) the resulting behaviour change of women choosing to get tested regularly to spot the cancer early.

The question of this post is, should we be looking further than that? Is the net good of a campaign as popular as this increased by the dearth of partners who have embraced it, or is it headed towards a backlash of consumer cynicism from people who just want to watch their football without the pink towels and buy their products without constant pink reminders?

Share your thoughts in a comment below.  

30 Second Book Review: Spend Shift

Who has time to read books? We all should, but it's tough to know what is worth reading. Each week, this blog will spotlight a new book relevant for marketers or people in business with ideas worth learning and sharing. Through a combination of a personal interview with the Authors, and short review - you'll get the basic premise of the book and why you might want to read it. To recommend a book to be featured, send an email pitch to influentialmarketing@gmail.com.

This week's featured book is Spend Shift by John Gerzema & Michael D. Antonio, a research based guide to how post-financial-crisis values are changing the face of consumerism.

THE INTERVIEW (Thoughts from John Gerzema):

1. What inspired you to write Spend Shift?

I gave a speech at a TEDx event on the post-crisis consumer in Kansas City in late 2009. People told me they identified with the ideas, but asked if this was happening elsewhere around the country. So I hit the road visiting dozens of red and blue states with Michael D’Antonio, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist to understand how our lives are changing after the recession. We sat across kitchen counters, talked to small business owners and interviewed people from over fifty startups and large corporations.

2. What is the big idea of the book?

There are cultural shifts explained by consumer behavior – what we came to call a Spend Shift – in how people defined and pursued what they now consider the good life and what they expect from the marketplace. Even though people find themselves less rich, they’re realizing the way they spend is a new source of power.  We’re moving from mindless to mindful consumption.

3. Who is the perfect person to read this book?

Anyone who is bullish on America. The U.S. been beaten down as of late, but our travels left us inspired that at the grassroots level, consumer is adaptable, business is adaptable and the future is not so dim as it appears.

THE 30 SECOND REVIEW (Why You Should Read It):

How people make decisions and their irrational behaviour at times is the focus of many books that have come out recently. What I liked about Spend Shift is that it tackles the all important question of culture and environment which so many books leave out. For Americans, the choices they make related to how they consume products is based as much on their own emotional state as the environment around them. In this book, John Gerzema and his Pulitzer prize-winning co-Author Michael D. Antonio use exclusive data from marketing agency Young & Rubicam's vast database of public attitudes to spotlight how people across America are returning to "age-old values such as self-reliance, faith and thrift to redefine the good life." In John's words, the macro trend is that "mindless consumption becomes mindful" - which is evidenced also by the rise of tools like Good Guide which help to shine a light on the practices of companies that we buy from. Spend Shift is an apt title for what is happening in the minds of these consumers, and for anyone who wants to get the inside scoop on how to prepare for this shift - Gerzema and Antonio's book is a great starting point. (Review written by Rohit Bhargava)

LINKS AND MORE INFORMATION:

Official Book Website: http://amzn.to/98Xpad
Author's Website: http://www.johngerzema.com
Follow the Author on Twitter at @johngerzema

REVIEW PHILOSOPHY (Why This Review Matters):

All the books that are reviewed in this series are worth your time. That's why you won't find any negative book reviews on this blog. As a Author myself, I have hundreds of book on my shelf and have researched hundreds more. I get many invitations to preview books and choose just one every week to share here on this blog. Read my other book reviews at http://www.rohitbhargava.com/book-reviews/.

Why Marketers Suck At Customer Service (And 3 Ways To Improve)

The truth isn't pretty - but it is time we owned up to it. Most people who work in marketing would make terrible customer service people. Our job, inherently, is to influence consumers in some way to take an action that positively impacts our company. We want them to buy from us, or talk about our products, or join our newsletters. Even when marketing is more of a dialogue and offers a great authentic conversation - the function is still not the same as great customer service.

Customer care, as I'm frequently reminded anytime I participate in an event with SOCAP, the Global Community of Relationship Experts. Today at the SOCAP annual convention, I interviewed Craig Newmark from Craigslist and then moderated a panel with Bryan Rhoads from Intel, Frank Eliason from Citi (formerly Comcast) and Helen Horsham-Bertels from Starwood Hotels. Our topics ranged from how Craigslist creates a unique focus on customer care led by their introverted Founder to what the future of customer care in a social media world may be.

Through the discussion, we touched on the frequent tension between marketing and customer care as opposing forces - and Helen shared an interesting insight about social media ... that it may be the bridge that starts to finally bring the functions of marketing and customer care closer together. Hardly anyone would dispute that providing great customer care also results in excellent marketing and PR. The experience customers have with your brand when they have a question or issue can fundamentally shape their perceptions in the long term.

For marketers for whom this world has gotten much closer as a result of social media, here are a few lessons that I learned during our discussions today that may help all of us get better at customer care:

1. Focus on resolution. In the customer care world, most organizations use a very tangible structure for understanding and resolving customer questions and problems. Their entire goal is resolution, and NOT conversion. Facts don't really matter, what matters is that a customer wants to feel heard and is ultimately looking for some type of resolution and your job is to find one that works for them but is also fair to your company.
2. Bring in the experts. There are people paid in most companies to address customer issues and many problems occur when members of a marketing team find these issues online and then try to address them on their own. A necessity for your team is to understand what the escalation process is and get better about passing along issues and questions that you find to the appropriate team member. Not only are they paid to do it, but they probably have more tools and skills at their disposal to do a better job at it than you could.
3. Have more empathy. One of the most telling moments for me was when I sat down to lunch a bit late with 8 people at a round table, most of whom had already finished their lunch. More than half of them, without even knowing who I was, instantly looked around for the waiter to let him know that I had sat down and needed food. Showing empathy is just part of the personality of a good customer care person, and is a skill that you can easily perform a marketing role without. We need to have more of it.

For more, see my related post: 5 Things Customer Care Teams Wish Marketers Did Differently

Life And Marketing Lessons From LIVESTRONG CEO Doug Ulman

Every day too many people hear the three worst words in the English language: "you have cancer." That was one of the many insights that emerged in my talk with Doug Ulman on the stage last night at BlogWorld as we talked about the fight against cancer, his personal battle as a three time cancer survivor and how social tools have helped LIVESTRONG to become one of the most social media savvy organizations in the world of healthcare and perhaps in any industry. With nearly a million followers on Twitter, Doug himself was recently described in a Fast Company piece as the "most savvy healthcare leader in social media" - a description he shrugs off because it has never been a goal for him to achieve that sort of niche notoriety.

The discussion we had, though, was telling of not only his personal philosophy but an enlightened way of thinking about openness and authenticity within an organization that more and more businesses will be looking to for inspiration. Some people know LIVESTRONG from the association with its founder Lance Armstrong. Others know it from the ever present yellow wristbands that many at the event were wearing to remember people in their own lives who had fought against cancer. As we opened the session, I asked people to stand if they were a survivor of cancer, or had a loved one who had fought cancer or if they had someone who had lost the fight against cancer. By the end of it, everyone was standing.

After our session, several people came to me and shared that this was one of those topics that went beyond social media and at a conference like BlogWorld where it is easy to focus just on very tactical things like building an audience for your blog or how to rank higher on Google or how to earn more money from writing ... the bigger picture can be forgotten. Doug's story, for me and many others, helped to bring back that perspective to the event. You can watch our full talk on UStream below - but here are a few highlights that I will take away as advice for how to better use social media to spread an idea, and more importantly, how to be a better person.

1. Be Compassionate. It has become easy not to really care about anything. You can follow advice blindly, do what you are supposed to do and forget about the all important quality of compassion. Yet this compassion is such an important piece of how we connect with one another. It means that you are not only listening to someone, but you actually care about their experience and what they are sharing with you. For Doug, this compassion is a necessity, because some of the people he interacts with may very well be going through the worst experience of their lives. The real question is, how compassionate are you on a daily basis with things that may seem much more ordinary? Compassion stands out. It makes you memorable, and it makes your conversations more meaningful.
2. Try Out Your Dumb Ideas. There was a marketing idea that Nike shares with LIVESTRONG which nearly everyone who heard it hated. It was half baked, relied on a behaviour from people that there was no reasonable basis to expect would happen, and seemed even to visionary leaders like Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, to be a complete waste of time. That idea was to create 5000 yellow bracelets with the words "LIVESTRONG" and the Nike swoosh on them and sell them for $1 each. Then, elite athletes started wearing these bracelets, others wanted them, and the idea went viral. Now the LIVESTRONG yellow bracelet is as recognizable as any iconic cause related symbol all across the world. If LIVESTRONG had killed that idea based on feedback, they would have missed a game changing opportunity. Sometimes you need to let dumb ideas be tried, because they just might work.
3. Channel Instead Of Shutting Down. Every day around the world someone wants to create something to help promote the mission of LIVESTRONG. With a brand to manage, though, the challenge is how to take all of this well meaning energy and make sure that it is being used in an efficient way without damaging the core things that the brand stands for. Doug and his team spend a lot of time identifying people around the world as LIVESTRONG leaders and giving them the tools to work in their local communities to promote the mission of LIVESTRONG, while staying connected to the core organization. This focus on channeling all the energy towards a common goal rather than shutting people out pays off with happy, engaged and motivated leaders and advocates around the world.
4. Use Social Media To Focus On The Real World. Social media can feel like a very virtual and intangible world where people give each other digital high-fives and just do things like chatting, poking, friending and following. One of the biggest things you can see if you look at the content and experiences on LIVESTRONG is that social media is a key way that their organization helps people to connect with one another IN REAL LIFE. They organize events and biking tours, they host runs and local fundraisers. All of this activity can be coordinated online through social media, and content that is generated may live on social media - but the end goal is to get people to connect in real life and get to know one another and build the community.

If you do want to see the full video of our session, you can check out the live video on UStream or watch it below. Also, from the stage we announced the second year of the #beatcancer program - an online effort to raise money for cancer research to be donated to multiple organizations (including LIVESTRONG). To participate, just include the hashtag #beatcancer in a tweet and 5 cents will be donated by one of our corporate partners to cancer research. Last year this effort set a Guiness Book of World Records mark with over 200,000 tweets in 24 hours - and this we want to top that mark. Please participate and add your voice to the global fight against cancer by tweeting #beatcancer!

5 Things I've Learned About Blogging After 6 Years

I am spending the end of this week surrounded by fellow bloggers at the annual Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas and it is one of my favorite events of the year both for the quality of the show and speakers as well as for the singular focus on blogging as a topic.  This year, I have the privilege of doing a keynote session with Doug Ulman, the CEO of LIVESTRONG, where we will talk about how his organization has managed to go from a cause to a movement and what role social media has played in that evolution.

Aside from this great topic, though, I have spent a considerable time leading up to this event thinking about the topic of how to consistently create great content and keep a blog up to date. It is something that I personally struggle with all the time, as my blog is a personal one and is not something that I rely on to make money or support my family with. As a result, it is sometimes tough to keep up a commitment to post here. My philosophy over the six years of writing this blog has always been to write only when I have something meaningful to say and the time to do it right.

The challenge of knowing what to write about isn't easy. But the biggest advice I can offer is to get over your "blog guilt" for not writing more often and try to create situations for yourself where you can most easily be successful at continually creating great content.  Here are a few tips to do that:

1. Keep an archive of ideas. I have a document where I write down all the ideas for posts that I have. I keep it on my computer and consistently add to it. Sometimes there are ideas that I have which I keep there for months until something else comes up which reminds me of it and then I post about it. My recent post about the GAP logo was one example. I had the idea for that post some time ago, but it was only when the whole issue with GAP changing their logo and then reverting back to their old one came up that I was reminded of it and the topic for the post became timely once again.
2. Half-write posts and always title them. Often I will get inspired to write something into a post but not have enough information or research in order to finish the post.  Writing half of the post is something I can do in 10 or 15 minutes, even though I know doing the rest of it may take another hour or two.  So I will write what I have in my head, and put a title on the post so I can remember the main point I was making. Then I have something I can return to when I have a bit more time and the process of writing doesn't have to start with a blank screen.
3. Always include links and always try to click them. Links are great for providing context, but they can also connect your blog post to other things that are out there. By clicking your own links, you can subtly let the person or organization who you linked to that you wrote about them.  Because most people pay attention to their web stats, they will see where the link came from and either visit through a Google Alert or similar tracking method to come back to your post.
4. Think creatively about your content. One presentation that I did several years ago which I am still proud of was called the "25 Styles of Blogging." It was created to outline several types of blog posts that any blogger could use to keep their blog content fresh and interesting.  I am embedding it at the end of this post so you can easily read and digest those tips as well - they continue to help me when I hit a wall in terms of what to write about.
5. Create your own set of rules for what works. After you have been blogging for some time, you'll start to get a sense for what works best in your area. For me, using conventions like numbered lists to share thoughts or incorporating images or video tend to work very well. I know that I focus on having a blog where I am not just identifying something interesting, but sharing a definite point of view about it and whether it is good or bad. This is a mix of forming a writing style and knowing what your readers want to read and it is vital as you start to build your audience on your blog.

Today and tomorrow I'm looking forward to reading and hearing many more insights from the attendees and speakers at the Blogworld Expo. You can follow the conversations live on Twitter by tracking the hashtag/keyword for the event: "#BWE10"

The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging ... And When To Use Each One

View more presentations from Rohit Bhargava.

For more advice on blogging from previous posts on this blog, check out my Blogging Advice page on the Personality Not Included site.

Upcoming Events & How To Be A Marketing Generalist

If you work in marketing today, it is easy to become focused on a niche. In fact, most of the best and smartest people in marketing are the ones who do exactly that. They focus on an industry, become an expert and are sought after for their thinking and advice by others in that industry. The conventional wisdom is that you need to have this kind of focus in order to succeed in marketing. This was never the path that I wanted to have.

Part of the reason I love what I do is because it gives me the chance to have a diversity of experience. I can work with a luxury brand in the same day that I'm helping a non-profit create messages of advocacy to motivate behaviour change. To be forced to shift mindsets in that way on a daily basis is something I find exhilarating. This focus on creating a diversity of experience is also the philosophy I use when deciding what events to participate in. Each month I will usually speak at between 2 and 4 events on very different topics.

Over the next several weeks I will be participating in three very different events that follow this philosophy of sharing diverse experiences and I am excited about them for very different reasons:

Blogworld - Keynote Interview with Doug Ulman, CEO of LIVESTRONG (10/14/10)
"Behind The Wristband: How LiveStrong Evolved From A Cause To A Movement"

The closing keynote of the first day of Blogworld, this session will be an informal chat with Doug about how LIVESTRONG has managed to stand above the dozens of other charitable organizations working to fight cancer and created a global movement engaging millions of people. His personal story is an inspiring one as well and this will be the official launching point for the second year of the well publicized #beatcancer social media advocacy and donation program. It is also a format that I personally love doing, because it offers me the chance to facilitate some great thinking from someone else and listen to their insights instead of trying to come up with some myself!

SOCAP - Keynote Interview with Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist (10/19/10)
Keynote Panel - "The Future of Customer Care: Overhyped Fad or True Revolution?"

The SOCAP event is one of the largest in the world focused on customer care and bringing customer care professionals together from around the world. In my dual sessions, I will have the chance to interview Craig from Craigslist about what makes his company's focus to customer care so unique and what lessons he might offer to other businesses about the importance of taking the personal approach when it comes to customer care. Immediately following, I will be moderating a panel with Frank Eliason from Citibank (formerly the voice behind the @comcastcares Twitter handle for Comcast), Bryan Rhoads from Intel (affectionately known around Intel as the "blogfather" for his central role in helping to originally launch Intel's blogs), and Helen Horsham-Bertels from Starwood all about the future of customer care. The panelists will share some insights from each of their organizations about how customer care is evolving and lessons that they can offer for the audience.

Pharma eCommunication & Online Marketing Summit - Keynote Presentation (11/08/10)
"6 Surprising Lessons Pharma Can Learn From Other Industries"

I spend a lot of my "day job" at Ogilvy working with healthcare clients and typically the industry has been slow to adopt social technologies and more innovative forms of marketing. This great 2 day event put on by eyeforpharma is going to feature lots of pharma brands sharing insights from some of their efforts about what is working and why. In my session, I'm going to follow through on the diversity of experience point I made earlier and aim to bring some highly relevant examples to the event from outside the world of pharma. This is always a tricky thing, because they need to feel applicable enough, but I am excited about sharing this type of content at the event and hearing the feedback from attendees on whether there may indeed be lessons to learn from outside the industry that could be applied within it. The organizers of the event also provided a $500 off discount code for any blog readers who might be interested in attending - just quote "IM" when you register.

Customer care.

Creating a movement with social media.

Helping evolve how pharma brands are marketing.

These are three great and diverse topics and a VERY exciting few weeks coming up. This is why I do what I do. I'll be sure to share marketing insights from each event as they happen, but in the meantime if you will be at any of these, please let me know as I would love to see you there!

The GAP Logo Poll: Is Ignoring Brand Equity A New Marketing Trend?

It is easy to take relationships for granted. This is in business or life, when something becomes so familiar it can fall into the back ground and its value becomes easy to forget. Last year Tropicana launched an entirely new brand look and had the customers up in arms about the new design*. Within months they switched it back. Earlier this year, GM launched what (in my opinion) was a well conceived marketing stunt to kill the "Chevy" brand in an effort to remind people of all the positive associations that brand had with American culture. Again, soon after GM retracted that effort.

The latest in this growing trend is the GAP - who recently changed their logo and then backtracked to now announce that they will "engage in the dialogue, take their [customers] feedback on board and work together as we move ahead and evolve to the next phase of Gap." Why are all these companies forgetting about the equity that their brands have built up in the minds of the consumer? More importantly, is it even an accident - or are they using it as a stunt to simply remind people of how much they really liked the old brand in the first place?

It can be difficult to tell, but from a PR point of view you could certainly get worse coverage than having all the mainstream media report on how much people loved your brand and didn't want it to change. Any PR team would take that story over other types of negative coverage any day. So will we see more brands conveniently "forget" about their brand equity in order to get their current customers to start caring more about the brand for a day or two? Or am I being too optimistic about the intelligence and foresight of these brand managers and giving them too much credit for thinking through what may just be a lack of good judgement and poor marketing strategy?

Let's find out. Answer this poll and let me know what you think:

*Disclaimer - I have worked on the Tropicana brand in the past and was working on it around the time of this new logo announcement, however I had no involvement in this part of the business.