Brand Central Station

You can’t write a blog about blogs about marketing and not provide some coverage of Google’s deal with AOL, can you?

This piece that ran on MarketingVOX provides a brief overview of what’s happened since the deal was announced: Google will be making some changes in exactly what it allows as far as advertising is concerned.

Logos. Or, more precisely, logos, advertiser graphics and some new ad formats. According to MarketinVOX:

“Various ad formats are being considered, including a box that appears on the bottom right of the search results page, traditional banners on image search and on Froogle (which already has graphical ads), and content in Google’s One Box program.”

This represents a fairly significant deviation for Google. Graphically speaking, the search giant’s pages are “Spartan” at best. So, how is the blog world reacting to the imminent change?

Surprise: Tech blogger, Jim Mathies, writes that he would have expected Microsoft to bend their rules, but not Google. Jim provides a fairly complete overview of the nature of the deal and the pending changes.

Sensing Weakness: Kelsey Ruger, writing for The Moleskin blog, says:

“Hmm…keeping Microsoft away from AOL is getting a little costly. Maybe there is room for a new upstart search engine?”

Conditional Acceptance: Chris Rossini’s Marketplace Monitor blog doesn’t see a problem with the Google/AOL deal as long as the ads don’t become too obtrusive. According to Chris:

“I really can’t stand constantly blinking ads. I’m sure that Google will have standards that will have to be met.

This will be a good deal for advertisers as the text-only ads are really easy to pass over without taking notice of them. A balance will have to be found where both advertisers and users will be satisfied with the new policy.”

But the preeminent source in the blogosphere to turn to on this one is Danny Sullivan, who keeps up the SearchEngineWatch blog. Danny outlines both the positives and the potential negatives of the Google/AOL deal and details how this new approach to advertising is a diversion from Google’s long-standing graphics and marketing standards.

Good stuff to know. Better stuff to read.

Technorati Tags: Google, AOL, Merger, Online Advertising, SEO, Search Advertising

Harry Joiner, the voice and brains behind the Marketing Headhunter.com blog provided a link to Jakob Nielsen’s latest news that the number Internet users has now crossed the one billion mark. Apparently, online growth is still continuing at an 18% annual rate meaning we’ll be at the 2 billion mark in just ten years.

Makes you feel kind of special, doesn’t it?

Please don’t share this post with my son until after his Freshman English final this afternoon … but, Jim Logan makes an interesting point that even though he’s a life-long student on the proper use of words, tense and punctuation, he’s a master of the fragmented sentence.

Who knew?

Actually, Jim’s point is quite valid:

“Focus on your customer … their tone, their language, their way of communicating. There is no right or wrong way to communicate as long as you’re speaking in language appropriate to your audience and speaking to them in terms they understand.”

We hear that, Jim. Loud and clear.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Copywriting, Creative Direction, Direct Response

As marketers, we’re still trying to get our arms (and heads) around social media. Blogs make up a significant portion of that media channel. But exactly what is the commercial viability of social media properties in general and blogs (specifically)?

Seth Godin asks that question in a recent post on his blog: Seth’s Blog.

Just when marketers seem to have landed on a set of rules related to e-mail marketing (permission is the key to achieving a legitimate effect) and advertising on blogs has become pervasive, someone comes in and offers to change all the rules. Now Seth is calling all of those conventional rules back in to question by offering a hypothetical, hypothetical:

“Imagining for just a moment that there’s no self-interest, no profit motive, imagining that the blogger is doing what is in the best interest of the readership–what’s the right balance? Is it one ad per page? 25? Is it no promotional links to new projects (from you or from those you respect) or is one the right number?”

“But when I see how other blogs serve their readers with promotion, MTV style, I wonder… I honestly don’t have an answer for you… this is a question, not a rant. If promotion works, if it brings people stuff that they’re glad they got and it makes the experience more exciting, then what’s wrong with it?”

At some point, we have to get comfortable with the idea that some people are able to make money doing what others do for free. That doesn’t seem to be a particularly bad thing. And the beauty of social media channels like blogs is that if you feel a writer is being overtly commercial you can tell him.

After all, that’s why it’s call “social media” isn’t it?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Blogging, Seth Godin, Blog Advertising, Blog Promotion

As I was perusing my blogroll for the past few weeks, I stumbled across two posts on branding and the customer experience from Jennifer Rice at the “What’s Your Brand Mantra” blog. While I agree with much of what Jennifer has to say (e.g. “An effective brand keeps its promises” and “Branding starts with the CEO and executive team”), I have to admit that there are a few points where I gently disagree with her.

In her post on Madison Avenue and branding, Jennifer is right on when she calls out “the falacy of brand advertising.” I’ve been in those meetings where marketing types try to neatly break ad budgets down into promotions with a chunk going to “branding.” Somehow, the belief that branding could be relegated to the strata of marketing strategy seemed to become part of the entrenched dogma of agencies in the 1970′s and 80′s.

This is flat-out wrong, of course. Branding is not a marketing strategy or even a larger business strategy. Branding is what happens as a result of an enterprises efforts to set expectations by making promises (via advertising, media relations and a host of other external communications methods) and then keep those promises.

Branding is not a business strategy, it’s an inevitability.

So far, so good – but Jennifer’s second point (that agencies are ineffective when it comes to proposing brand strategy) is a bit off in my opinion. Sure, there are plenty of agencies that try to force clients to make unique promises that can’t be kept because the proposed television spots are sure award winners or a print campaign includes a week-long stay at a resort in the Caribbean (true story – maybe for another post). But effectiveness doesn’t come through strategy alone.

Outsider or no, whoever makes the recommendation on how the brand should be communicated is doomed to failure if he or she doesn’t have considerable sway or isn’t colluding with the person in charge of operations. Promises made are worth less than zero of they can’t be kept. And that leads us to customer service …

Jennifer’s post on missing the forest for the trees tries to explain the fundamental differences between customer service and customer experience. While she does an admirable job of setting the two concepts apart Jennifer is missing a very important point: more now than ever, experience counts.

We reported on the importance of the experience back at the beginning of December. Not only does the experience reinforce and deliver on the promises made about the brand, it also sets up the consumer to receive messages (promises) about the brand in the future. Three out of four consumers surveyed says the quality of the experience directly impacts how they view/consider advertising in support of the brand the next time they are exposed to it.

All in all, Jennifer’s posts are interesting and enlightening – especially for ad agencies or PR firms trying to position themselves as “branding experts” to potential clients.

Technorati Tags: Branding, Brand, Advertising Agencies, Management, Brand Management, Marketing

It has to be the mark of a successful branding campaign when consumers start imitating the behavior they see in your advertising, right? For the most part, this kind of consumer hommage is cute and makes for great “brand evangelism” stories.

For Lexus, on the other hand, consumer reaction to the “gift” campaign that has been running during the holidays for the past few years is starting to make a signficant impact on their sales figures. Blogger Jonathan Baskin provides an interesting perspective on the phenomenon:

“… it works so well that Lexus reports a significant uptick in December sales, and a torrent of pickups scheduled for Christmas Eve day (lots of purchasers request those big red bows from the commercials, too).”

But don’t just take Jonathan’s word for it. Reports from New York and Dallas recall similar stories of consumers who buy a Lexus and then have it delivered on Christmas morning.

Extending the promotional message (and the brand value) into the dealership is as easy as selecting and displaying the right product. According to John Iacono, vice president of Lexus of Manhattan and Bay Ridge Lexus in Brooklyn, the dealership only displays white vehicles with red bows on top and a red vehicle with a white bow in the middle of the showroom floor. “The customers feel like all the cars are gift wrapped.” he says.

And at a price point beginning around $35,000, this is a financially significant year-end promotion. According to a report in the New York Times, Lexus now sells more vehicles in December than in any other month.

Talk about the power of brand ….

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Branding, Brand, Lexus, Red Bow, Year-End Sales Event

What started out as a friendly little discussion about the ad campaign for AXE in Saudi Arabia on Frederik Samuel’s Advertising/Design Goodness blog turned into a discussion of the finer points of phallic symbolism (if you’ll excuse the pun).

Ouch.

Technorati Tags: marketing, Advertising, Art Direction, Graphic Design, Creative, Axe Deodorant

Just yesterday, I provided a reference to a helpful post on creating a corporate blog – then look what turns up on Richard Edelman’s blog – a post about selecting the right corporate blogger.

By recalling the details of his conversation with Suw Charmin, Richard did a great job of pointing out the cultural differences between the British and Americans when it comes to how marketing is positioned in our respective societies. Suw’s advice, to select a person or people who is “passionate, friendly, genuine, interesting, authentic, honest and open,” is fundamentally sound.

But if you think this person could be a marketing-type, it appears Suw would disagree with you. According to Richard’s account:

“Suw takes particular issue with marketing blogs. She believes that ‘marketing is about making yourself look attractive to buyers at the present moment whereas blogs are about looking into the future.’ ”

And this, in its purest form, is the difference between how the English and Americans view marketing and marketers. In many parts of the UK and Europe, marketing and promotion are interchangable. This is a little unusual in a region of the world where corporate social responsibility initiatives are far ahead of what we have here in the US. But many Europeans don’t see CSR and marketing to be related. Marketing, in essence, is all about the here and now rather than the long-term.

In the US, marketing is evolving to be an “approach” to business that focuses on long-term brand equities and direct relationships with customers and consituents. This understanding is, I think, what lies behind Richard’s retort to Suw’s take on marketing blogs:

“I told her that smart marketers are looking at the blogosphere as a wonderful opportunity to ask for the wisdom of the crowd and that great companies are willing to offer the opportunity for co-creation of brands and corporate reputations.”

But, as is more common than we might want to acknowledge, people can take different paths to reach very similar conclusions. In that way, Suw, Richard and we all agree on the importance of the corporate blog and the neccessity of the blogger to be able to connect one-on-one with the reader.

Good stuff. I highly recommend spending some time with Richard’s post on this subject.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Coporate Blogging, Suw Charmin, Richard Edelman, Edelman PR

You do this job as long as I have and you’re bound to take comfort that almost every client will share a few “unique mantras” with almost every other client. Along with “we focus on quality” and “we’re unique in our industry” is my personal favorite “we believe in exceeding our customers’ expectations.”

Blogger Nick Wreden has cut loose with a take on this often over-used phrase in his FusionBrand blog. “Exceeding Expectations” is a stupid business strategy, according to Nick. Not only is it unrealistic, it’s not true.

Nick cites a recent update on a Bain & Company survey that found while 80% of businesses felt they delivered “superior experience” to their customers, only 8% felt the same way.

Yikes.

There is some good, however, to the idea of going beyond what every customer expects from his or her supplier, though. As we’ve said time and again, brands are built by making promises through your communication and then meeting that expectation. Do it consistently and it looks like there’s more than 90% of the customers in the world that will be pleasantly surprised.

Maybe that hackneyed expression should be changed to “exceeding our clients’ initial expectations?”

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Business Strategy, Customer Service, CSR, Sales, Management, Leadership

I have to admit, this seemed a little counter-intuitive to me at first, but if John Jantsch (author of the Duct Tape Marketing blog) swears by it, there’s got to be something to the idea. John’s suggestion that we should allow clients to network seems a little risky. But with very little risk comes very few rewards.

So, what’s the potential upside? As you’ll see, John makes a case for letting clients talk to one another to learn from each other and, most importantly, “discover why they value you as a business partner.”

Great suggestion, John. I’d love to hear from anyone who has done this – either in real life or via social media like blogs, etc.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Customer Service, Customer Referrals, One-On-One Marketing, 1-to-1 Marketing

It’s a twist on the conventional Christmas Card (or, if you prefer, Holiday Card), but The Sedgwick Rd. Alternative’s campaign to promote the “true” meaning of Christmas is both noteworthy and hysterically funny.

Thanks to Steve Hall and the AdRants crew for the tip.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Agency Self-Promotion, Christmas, Pro Bono

We’ve seen the local newspaper come under fire from citizen journalists writing for local news and lifestyle portals (reference my recent exchanges on the PressThink blog) – well, now we’re starting to see the same kind of thing happen to venerable, local television stations. Scott Baradell at the Media Orchard blog has provided this insightful post on what KRON TV (located in the Bay Area) is doing to get more citizen journalists out in the street on their behalf.

I found his article to be well-researched and very interesting, but it disturbed me. To be honest, as I read the article, all I could think of was that old television show from the 1980′s: Max Headroom.

As I’ve pointed out before (and in my comment to Scott’s blog post), I’m not sure citizen journalists are going to be able to cut it sufficiently to replace local television and newspapers. Not yet, anyway. We still need to find a way around the whole “lack of focus” thing that plagues most blogs and community portals.

Well, that and the fact that most of these efforts are run without any clear idea of how they are to make any money. And a lack of financial roots means there’s no way to maintain a sustained human resource against the problem. As soon as the enthusiasm dies, so does the media.

Have faith, though. I think we’ll figure something out – and that will be a significant breakthrough in the continuing “democratization” of media.

Technorati Tags: Journalism, Television, Citizen Journalism, Social Media