Influential Marketing Blog

A Business Lesson From The Australian Outback

There are several kinds of trees in the Australian outback that need fire in order to survive. The seeds of these trees won’t germinate unless the outer shell of the seeds are burned off by a bush fire.  For thousands of years, this process happened naturally. The aboriginal populations who lived in those areas recognized this and never tried to prevent natural bush fires from happening.

As settlers from Europe populated Australia, however, they started to burn off underbrush to control those same fires to protect nearby homes and people.  As they tragically learned in 2009 when unprecedented heat waves led to huge fires in Australia that sent plumes of smoke over major cities – depriving the land of fire was simply not possible. Eventually the fire still came.

Creating a business that is able to consistently innovate requires a type of thinking more akin to the aboriginals and how they embraced the fire. Fire in small business is the creative spark that helps you to stay fresh, ahead of competitors and continually innovating. Here are a few ways to make sure you are still encouraging the right unstoppable fires in your business to prepare for the future:

1. Hire people who disagree with you. A fire can come from a debate, and if you only have people in your small business who agree with you – focus on finding some dissenters in the mix. The resulting disagreement that ensues may lead your small business to better ideas that you may not have otherwise come to, as long as you are on the same page about the bigger things.
2. Look outside your industry. It is tempting to just focus on directly relevant examples of businesses doing something innovative in your space, but sometimes the best idea sparks can come out of reading something completely unrelated to your business. Here’s one easy way to get new ideas – go to a bookstore and pick up a magazine written for an industry that you aren’t in. The ideas you find there might inspire you to try something new for your business.  
3. Encourage more experimentation. When employees are encouraged to follow the status quo, innovation typically comes to a standstill. What can you do to get people to experiment with new ways of doing things? Can you have employees “swap” jobs for a day? What about encouraging a moment in time where employees come together to think of new untried ways to promote your business or serve your customers better/differently?       

The most successful businesses find a way to stay relevant and avoid stagnating. Your business needs the fire of innovation in order to survive. What are you doing to make sure that fire still happens?

Audubon Society Promotes Happy Bird Watching, Not Angry Bird Tossing

Imagine you're the marketing team at the Audubon Society, a group that has been around for nearly a century and your mission for that time has been to promote better man-bird relations -- how would you respond to a internationally addictive game which has been downloaded more than 400 million times that portrays your heroes as "angry" and encourages people to toss them into stuff for prizes?

The question probably isn't a fair one, as I imagine the Audubon Society probably hasn't lost much sleep over how the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game has portrayed birds ... but it does bring birds and the pasttime of "birding" some long overdue attention.

Birding, as I once learned from one of my professors of English who was addicted to the activity, usually involves heading out to the forest and looking through binoculars and cameras with zoom lenses for different types of birds. Once seen, a bird is typically logged into a birding journal or documented via a photograph, and birders spend their time collecting long lists of exotic or rare birds that they have seen (the rarest of which are called "life birds") and compare lists with one another. 

Earlier this month, The Audubon Society launched what is quickly becoming another addictive bird-focused game online called "Birding The Net." Tying into the upcoming Hollywood movie release of The Big Year - an upcoming Hollywood film featuring Steve Martin and Jack Black where characters compete to see the most North American birds in one year - the game is built on Facebook and offers a virtual version of bird watching where participants are challenged to find birds spread across the Internet and collect the most in order to win prizes.  

As David Yarnold, President and CEO of Audubon describes, “birds are the best possible ambassadors for the environment, and this will help people see them in a whole new way. This is about fun – but it’s also about getting more people involved in taking action to protect birds and the planet we share with them. And with this unprecedented use of social media and the web, we’re also making it clear that this is not your grandmother’s Audubon.”

The game, which you can get a taste of on this blog for a week by clicking one of the birds above, will run through November 7th and I predict it will succeed brilliantly as a marketing strategy for Audubon Society. Spending some time looking, it offers at least five good lessons for marketers:

1. Timing/Hollywood Tie-in - With the link to the upcoming Hollywood film, the Audubon Society will get infinitely more eyeballs to this campaign and lots more funding and support. Chances are the beautiful visual design of this campaign was due in no small part to 20th Century Fox’s ability to fund the agency (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) behind this.
2. Recreates A Real Life Experience - The act of surfing online to various sites and hoping to see birds perfectly recreates what the experience of birding in real life is. You never know what you'll see, you are sometimes disappointed, but you get that flash of excitement when you do see a bird and it's one you haven't seen before.
3. Uses Behavioural Economics - When you first register, you have a clean slate of grayed out cards ... which you immediately want to start collecting. "Earning" the first several are easy - you get one just for starting and there are another 3 or 4 easily available on obvious sites like www.audubonguides.com, but then it gets tougher. Once you have started, though, you can't help wanting to collect more.
4. Engagement Through Design - Though this would be hard to prove, my bet is that they will get much higher engagement with this effort as a result of a very strong creative execution. Put simply, the app and individual bird cards are beautifully designed. Looking at them online, you almost wish they would produce them in print too just so you could hold them in your hands. 
5. Built-in Shareability - There is lots of great shareability built into this campaign, from the ability to embed your own birdhouse on your blog or website to leaderboards and sharing through Facebook. The campaign has a strong understanding of why and how people share at its heart and makes it easy to do so. 
6. Bird Personality - A visit to the Twitter account for one of the birds, the Rufous Hummingbird (@RufHummingbird) yields this bio: "Tireless traveler and flower enthusiast on a mission of nectar discovery." All the other bird Twitter accounts feature similar personality and a bit of good natured rivalry between them. It makes it fun to engage with the birds and adds an important element of, well, humanity to the campaign.
7. Curiosity and Discovery - Perhaps the most important element that makes this fun is the fact that you need to make new discoveries of where the birds are, and they have engaged your curiosity to see where they turn up next. It is an essential element of gaming, and one that Angry Birds (coincidentally) makes excellent use of. 

Ultimately, Birding The Net stands is one of the most original uses of social media and gaming I've seen lately to achieve the dual purpose of promoting an upcoming movie as well as reminding people that a pasttime which has been around for centuries can still offer a thrill not only in the virtual world ... but if you shut off the technology and head out into the real world as well. 

Video Introduction To Birding The Net:

How To Create A CSR Program For Your Small Business

 

There is a relatively fancy term and acronym given to all the work that many large organizations do to combat many types of social causes. CSR – or Corporate Social Responsibility – is an umbrella term for everything from water conservation to fighting all kinds of addiction. Increasingly for many large businesses, it is becoming a critical way that they grow brand reputation as well as give back to the communities and societies that they sell to.  But CSR programs are not just for large companies.

Some businesses are famous for how they have built CSR programs into the fabric of their business. Tom’s Shoes calls itself a “socially responsible business” and lives up to it by giving one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes you buy. There is growing evidence that it matters more than ever to consumer behavior as well. 

People are reading labels more than ever. They are rebelling against overly processed materials and making choices based on cleaner, healthier, more natural ingredients and processes.  More importantly, they are looking for companies that have a heart. In a groundbreaking book about consumer behavior called “Spend Shift” – the authors termed this the age of “mindful consumption” where the way that people are buying and interacting with businesses is based on more than just a product or service.

Every purchase is a vote, and consumers are taking more ownership over the votes they cast. How can you help your small business to adapt to this trend? Giving back, quite simply, is a smart business strategy.  Here are a few steps:

Step 1: Choose a relevant issue. 

Ideally this will be something that relates to the core nature of your business. Coke uses lots of water, so obviously they should care about it. What’s your similarly relevant issue? They key point here is that you need to focus. Resist the temptation to choose multiple issues – start with one main one, and you can always grow your efforts at a later stage.

Step 2: Find the right partners. 

No matter what issue you choose, chances are there will already be non profit organizations who are working on that issue. Do your research and try to identify the best ones to partner with.  They may not necessarily be the largest either. Think regionally and try to find groups who you can establish a personal connection with and therefore inspire more passion from your customers and employees in supporting them.

Step 3: Build your credibility. 

Simply announcing an issue to focus on isn’t enough, you need to back it up with actions. What foundation are you joining? Which volunteer community are your employees participating in? How much will you set aside to donate? These are the proof points that make your commitment real, and you need them.

Step 4: Evangelize your efforts. 

This stage is the most potentially beneficial from a marketing point of view for your business, but also needs to be handled carefully. You cannot be seen as exploiting your efforts for business gain … but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about what you are doing and encourage more of your customers and potential customers to support your efforts either directly, or indirectly by patronizing your business.

Step 5: Maximize your impact.

A great CSR program involves continually reassessing your performance to make sure you are ACTUALLY impacting the issue that you care about. Are your donations getting to the population that needs them? Are you using all the resources that you could be using? Do you have the right partnerships? These questions will help you to optimize your efforts. 

 

5 Surprising Reasons Haters Are Good For Your Business

There are generally two kinds of businesses, the ones who are afraid of haters and the ones who aren't. A hater is pretty easy to spot - someone who is disgruntled enough to actively turn to every avenue they can find to talk about how much they hate you and your business. They often find their way onto social media, thanks to the low barrier of entry and promise that any invisible comment can find its way onto the highly visible first page of Google results.

Though it may not seem like it, these haters are a good thing. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Haters expose vulnerability. No business is perfect and haters sometimes have valid points. It requires an open mind to be able to focus on the heart of a complaint and ignore the emotionally charged aspects, but if you do then this can make your business stronger because it helps you hone in on the things that you really need to fix.
2. Haters can be converted. There are many types of haters that may come to your business. The most frequent type isn’t the one who will passionately hate your business forever, but rather someone who has had a negative experience of some kind. If you can find a way to fix that experience and make it right, that same person can be transformed into your biggest advocate.
3. Haters bring attention. Though I am not a believer in the “any publicity is good publicity” motto of some … the fact is that when you have people actively talking about how bad or pathetic your business is – it can add visibility and help to keep you from being invisible. If you can find the right ways to counter the negativity, that attention can actually become a good thing.
4. Haters publicize frequently asked questions. If you have a FAQ page on your website, you will realize the power that answering often asked questions can have for giving potential customers an idea not just of what you do … but also what you DON’T do.
5. Haters validate social media efforts. If you have been actively using social media, the goodwill that you may have built up with your fans and friends comes in very handy when haters appear. The people you have invested time in building relationships with will often stick up for your brand and fight on your side.

What Steve Jobs Really Gave Us

A few weeks ago I was asked an interesting question about what inspires me.  As I thought about my answer, I realized that for me it isn't a person but rather an action that I find most inspirational.  The people around the world who have an idea and decide to do something about it deserve to be celebrated. Entrepreneurship itself is the thing that I find most inspirational. 

Last night as I was watching all the media coverage honoring Steve Jobs and his life, it got me thinking that perhaps his biggest impact on the world wasn't just the products that he helped create, but rather in showing the world just how much people can achieve when they are inspired. Inspiration itself can be like that - a lightning rod that takes an army of smart people and helps them create something real. To me, his power to inspire came down to three things:

1. Passion - By all reports of the people who worked with him, he lived and breathed the products that his company would work on. He would call engineers in the middle of the night, stress over a font or color choice and sometimes micromanage those small details. Still because of that passion and desire to be involved in the day to day work - not only could he make the products better, but he knew the products so well that when it came time to introduce them on stage to the world he wouldn't need to rely on bullet points prepared for him by product specialists. 
2. Purpose - With every new product release, you got the sense that Apple was focused on changing the world in some new way. The ecosystem that each of the products allowed, from new operating systems to iTunes to the billion dollar market for Apps were all poised to make a big impact on how each of us experiences the world. This was the higher purpose behind Apple, and you could see it through the products they released. 
3. Simplicity - When asked by biographers about what made Apple so powerful, one thing Steve Jobs always pointed to was the fact that Apple had always been a company which made less than 10 products. This extreme focus on simplicity carried through in his conversations with employees and how he would present products to the public. Simplicity can inspire because you strip away everything that is unimportant. What you are left with is a big idea which can move people. 

No doubt there will be countless books, articles and stories written about Steve Jobs and his impact over the coming years. For me, the biggest lesson I learned from watching and reading about Steve Jobs is the power of inspiration and how it can lead people to change the world. 

More posts about Apple on this blog:

• Steve Jobs And The 4 Counterintuitive Business Strategies Of Apple
• The Real Secret Of Apple's Success

How To Moderate A Great Panel Discussion

Several years ago I had the accidental good fortune to sit next to a flight attendant on a coast to coast flight as she was hitching a ride home. As we chatted, she mentioned that she far preferred working in the economy class part of the plane because travellers expected a lot less, so "you don't really have to work as hard to be nice." 

Panels at conferences usually elicit the same sort of low expectations. Generally the speakers are chosen based on job titles and companies they work for rather than an ability to share insights - and moderators follow the boring formula of asking a question and letting everyone on the panel answer it (which leads to lots of agreement and very little real discussion). The sad truth is, most panels suck - and usually the problem comes down to having an inexperienced moderator. 

The best moderators are the ones who know how to conduct an interview and shine the light on their interviewees. Johnny Carson, often considered one of the best interviewers, was famous for his philosophy of always making his guests look good. In our increasingly ego driven world - being a great moderator means putting your ego into the backseat and focusing on fostering a great discussion on stage.  Here are a few tips that should help:

1. Do your homework. You need to really know the issue you are talking about and who your panelists are, so you can focus the discussion and bring out their best points of view. This requires real preparation. Being a moderator doesn't let you off the hook to prepare just because you don't need to put any slides together. Know your panelists, their backgrounds and their companies - that is key. 
2. Help your panelists shine. When professionals agree to speak at an event, they generally have a point of view about something that they want to share. Maybe they are launching a new product, or trying to position their brand in a certain way. Knowing what motivates your panelists can help you to make sure they get to share their big burning issue, and are engaged in the discussion as a result. 
3. Never allow slides. Generally slides are conversation killers. If you want to moderate a great a lively discussion, force your panelists to lose their slides, and come ready to participate in a conversation instead. 
4. Use directed questions, not "down the line" question. This is perhaps the single biggest thing that separates great moderators from crappy ones. When you ask questions, tailor them to a specific panelist and ask for their point of view directly. Instead of asking them the same question, you might say "I know you have invested a lot of time in xxx, talk about whether you feel like that is working or not." Doing this helps get to some deeper insights and lets you avoid having your panelists all agree with and repeat one another. Of course, doing it also means you need to be familiar with your panelists and what they have done - which comes back to tip #1.
5. Offer direction, not a script. The best panels have an element of free flowing discussion. It is fine to share some starter questions with the panel, but be ready to follow the path of the conversation as you start to ask questions and guide the conversation in a natural way. 
6. Stay on topic. There is nothing worse than a panel which goes completely off topic and doesn't talk about the issue which is promised in the program for an event. In many cases, your audience chose to be part of your panel instead of attending another talk in the same time slot. Respect your audience's choice and make sure you do cover the topic promised in the description of your panel. 
7. Try to bring out different opinions. Part of doing this depends on your having some input in the selection of who the panelists will be ... so as much as possible try to have a hand in selecting panelists for any panel you agree to moderate. If this is not possible, try to find some areas where your panelists have different philosophies so you can try to bring those out.
8. Master the basics. There are some basic moderator tricks that you should learn and remember. For example, state your theme for the panel at the beginning, repeat all questions from the audience if they don't have microphones to make sure everyone can hear, give audience members a warning for questions (ie - "in 5 minutes I'll be asking for questions, so you should start thinking about what you want to ask now").  
9. Be the voice of the audience. At various points, you will hear topics or statements that will surely have the audience thinking about the same thing (ie - a panelist shares that there are "only three brands that really use social media effectively.") In this case, be the voice of the audience and follow up to make sure the panelist shares who those are and why. Everyone will be wondering, so you need to make sure you can empathize and ask those questions. 
10. Share a recap. After an on stage discussion, it is really important to recap the key messages that were shared during the panel and what the big takeaways should be for audience members. This is ideally done at the end of your panel, but can also be done through some sort of recap after the event itself (I love to do blog posts as recaps of events). 

In case you'd like to see my best effort at putting some of these tips into action, I'd love for you to come out and join me at the upcoming Social Media For Customer Service Summit where I'll be moderating two panels on Day 1. The team at Useful Social Media has kindly offered up a discount for readers of the Influential Marketing Blog to get 20% off registration by using the code "ROHIT11".