AniBlurbs (Column)

Consider this. By 2010, Best Buy’s Twelpforce had responded to over 29,000 questions and accumulated 26,837 followers on Twitter. But consider this too. It was the largest electronic retailer in the country – it takes a lot of shoppers to generate revenues of $4.4 billion in the month of December 2010. Consider too the sheer breadth of its offering, and that there are 245,267,292 people aged 15 years and over in the United States many of whom will presumably be in the market for some kind of electrical goods. And remember that the service was promoted through TV advertising as well as in-store-messaging. Suddenly it begins to feel as if that utility was actually delivered to and experienced directly by a relatively small population.

So, it is worth considering whether the mere availability of this service worked to elevate the brand’s reputation as being knowledgeable and responsive amongst a much broader population. Even though they never took advantage of this piece of utility. So was Twelpforce really a piece of utility?

One of the most eloquent and thought provoking essays on Advertising, Brand Utilities and Tech hypes I’ve read in quite some time. If like me you’re craving for some food for thought and sharp analysis Re the intersection of / hype surrounding the (much vaunted death) of Advertising and the rise of Brand Utilities, this is it.

Read the whole essay by Martin Weigel (@mweigel) here » The Enduring Power Of Stuff That Isn’t Useful And Why ‘Utility’ Will Not Overthrow Magic.

Post maintained by Anibal do Rosario

How do you build a chocolate brand? from edenspiekermann_ on Vimeo.

About AniBlurbs | Anibal do Rosario in English (Wie is Anibal do Rosario | Over AniBlurbs in het Engels)

Anibal do Rosario (1981), is een Digital Strategist die van zijn passie zijn beroep heeft weten te maken en continue op zoek is naar de ideale balans tussen creativiteit, gut-feeling en meetbare resultaten.

Heeft hierbij altijd zowel de eindgebruiker als de business doelstellingen scherp in het vizier. Creatieve strateeg, die als generalist goed op de hoogte is van de technische (on)mogelijkheden van alles wat interactief is, en daardoor een bruggenbouwer tussen diverse disciplines zoals Web Development & Design, Vormgeven, Customer Service, Marketing en Sales.

Anibal heeft samen met andere ervaren professionals mooie resultaten weten te boeken op diverse (Online) Marketing projecten voor zowel kleinere partijen uit het MKB, als diverse Triple A merken.

Achtergrond

Ervaring heeft Anibal de afgelopen twaalf jaar opgedaan met:

• Retail
• Direct Sales & Promotie
• Webdesign
• Entertainment (Dance)
• Webshops / e-Commerce
• Identity & Branding
• (Online) Marketing Strategieën

Ervaring Bureau- en Opdrachtgeverszijde

Anibal heeft zijn expertise opgedaan door samen te werken met en te leren van andere ervaren professionals, in projecten aan bureauzijde voor o.a. diverse overheidsorganisaties en Triple A-merken, zoals de Koninklijke Marine, Shell, UWV, Rabobank, Vodafone Nederland en meer.

Daarnaast is hij aan opdrachtgeverszijde actief geweest, zoals bij Tech start-ups Dance-Tunes.com (een dochter van ID&T en Q-dance) en GAMcard.

Ontwikkelen van (Online) Marketing Strategieën

Anibal is tevens verantwoordelijk geweest voor het ontwikkelen van de Marketing Strategie en Corporate Identity / Rebranding voor Persoonlijk Zorgnetwerk – het bedrijf achter onder andere Factuurdesk.nl, ePGB.nl & ZoekPgbZorg.nl.

Hij heeft deel uitgemaakt van het Online Marketing team bij “eFocus Strategy & Webdesign”. eFocus is recentelijk eind 2009 uitgeroepen tot het #1 full-service internetbureau door Emerce.

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Honda recently did a take-over on Vimeo.com which was much talked about by marketing insiders.

Instead of posting or explaining the concept here, I’d like to suggest you’d first take a look over on the site and experience it for yourself -especially if you’re a creative/interactive professional and haven’t seen it already.

[Performance warning: close down any other browser tabs/windows or any other application that has a direct net connection right now, I know I suffered from some serious lag the first time.]

Apart from the novelty(?) factor of this kind of creative content-integration, I’m not quite sure where the real added value for Honda and its customers lies in this particular case.

I’ll get back to that thought in a moment though; first I’d like to point to a section on the page that caught my attention. It clearly depicts how a viral starts spreading (see the 2 images below):

Honda Insight - Vimeo Take over Stats

The table contains the statistics of said video on a daily basis, i.e.: how many times it was watched, “liked” and how many comments were made on the page itself, all in relation to each other and non-cumulative (note that the numbers are displayed on a per day basis!).

Clearly, the usual exponential viral mechanisms are at work here, which is fascinating in of itself, yet I believe that despite these pretty impressive numbers this mini-campaign as is will not enjoy a widespread viewer base and live up to its true potential, mainly because of the following 4 reasons:

1. The content isn’t “spreadable”;
2. A lack of a clear call to action;
3. The quality of the content itself and
4. There’s no follow-up.

The content isn’t spreadable, technically speaking:
Notice how I didn’t embed the video right here as I usually would, instead referring you to Vimeo, because there was no other way you could undergo it the way it was meant to be experienced.

In other words: people will first have to go to the Vimeo page and have a true broadband internet connection(!) to experience it smoothly and in full effect; detach the video from the context of this page and it becomes just another (attempt at a) cool viral. Pure branding, zero capitalization of the ensuing conversations.

Nowadays it’s more effective to take a channel-neutral and/or federated content approach to reach out to your audience on the net, and part of that means making your content spreadable through widgets, embeddable video’s, etc.. The Vimeo video is embeddable of course, but the page -and thus the experience- is not.

There’s no call to action:
The concept itself doesn’t trigger the visitor to do anything: You just sit and watch, just like on TV…

The creative team apparently embraced the technological and creative possibilities that the internet offers in marrying video with a webpage, yet somehow failed to capitalize on the buzz that it generated and thus at the opportunity to generate leads.

Honda‘s rich media take over is no interactive advertising but more akin to an online guerrilla advert, which could have been done offline, possibly generating more buzz and brand-awareness outside the digerati niche.

Then again, it was created by Wieden & Kennedy (Amsterdam), a traditional agency with it’s roots firmly grounded in offline advertising campaigns.

The quality of the content isn’t worth spreading:
If it’s aimed at the Marketing/Tech/Creative niche: they’re already accustomed to these “Breaking-The-4^th-Wall” take-over actions by now on YouTube or dedicated viral mini-sites, and this example isn’t remarkable.

If it’s not aimed at said niche, then one has to wonder why on earth it was posted on a niche social video site like Vimeo.com in the first place…

Adding all the numbers together from the stats image above, there are over a 1.750 likes, 300+ comments and 177.000 views generated in less than two weeks(!), pointing to a cult hit and/or people watching it more than once (it’s not clear whether Vimeo filters out non-unique views/cookies).

On the other hand, the numbers in the table don’t depict all mentions of the video across the Social Media space, and it was only posted a few days ago, so this is just merely the tip of the iceberg. Here’s hoping that Honda’s campaign team has access to social media monitoring tools from Radian6 or TrackUr and have activated their BackType Alerts to keep a clear overview.

All in all, in terms of buzz and people interacting with the page this is no bad example of content integration at all, it’s just a shame there’s no apparent follow-up or integration in, say, a 360˚campaign for maximum effect.

Now of course at this very moment we have no idea what Honda’s campaign objective was in the first place: It could be a proof of concept, trying it out for a small fee, with little risk, before scaling it up on YouTube allowing the numbers game to come into play, leading to massive exposure and off course more ways for the community and consumers/prospects to interact with the brand.

As I’m a firm believer in the merits of content-integration instead of plain display bannering, for me personally it will be very interesting to see how this plays out and if Honda will release an evaluation on their company blog or industry titles like Ad Age or ReadWriteWeb.

Can you imagine the cost of putting this up as a TV-Ad during the Super Bowl or the Olympics? And would it have any effect? No, it wouldn’t, at least not in the way it can online…

My two cents are that this vid will be echoed for quite a bit in the coming days and people will want to share it and talk about it, not because it’s from Asics, but because it hit a snare:

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo

Two short interviews with Sol Sender, the Design Strategist behind the excellent adaptable and strong brand identity of the US President-Elect Barack Obama, wherein he shares the history, strategic branding process and key take-aways thereof.

As stipulated by Karl Long in the original referring post over at FUTURELAB.net, this could become the most iconic brand identity of our time -even more so when we consider the various ways in which it was deployed: the ultimate contemporary case of product quality (the candidate AND his message) first and marketing perfection second in a sweet marriage with The Crowds if we ever saw one.

Bonus: For the nitpickers out there:  In part 1, pause at 06:46 to see a screenshot of an Outdoor Dummy on a Dutch Public Transport Company bus stop , taken in the city of Amsterdam! [hometown of yours truly ;) ]

Sol Sender – Obama Logo Design Part 1 of 2

Sol Sender – Obama Logo Design Part 2 of 2

Here’s the teams blog post

Original Post: http://experiencecurve.com/archives/new-rules-implied-for-developing-brand-identity-for-social-media

Cutting deep in your Marketing budget (and thereby seeing it on default as a cost instead of an investment) is a short term tactic that isn’t going to help your company weather these uncertain times ahead of all of us. Instead it would be more sustainable to take a long term approach; a more critical look at what channels your spending this budget on and whether the story you’re telling is in line with the quality of your services or products.

And though your Marketing Department may stop talking about your company, products or service, the consumers are not: Au contraire; their conversations (in the Social Media space) are increasing exponentially!

Furthermore don’t forget to also take into account that most of your competitors are probably not as comfortable with such a progressive world view and will focus instead on the short term outcome. This means that by keeping your budget stable, but spending it more wisely, you could seriously gain competitive advantage.

“So, then since online has the reputation for being measurable, we’ll just cut back in our offline efforts.”

Contrary to popular belief among some of my peers, right now is NOT the time to cut in offline Ad spending: If there’s one thing we’ve learned so far, it’s that in times of Crisis there is a peak in the amount of readers, visitors, viewers and listeners to (in this particular case financial) news papers & websites, TV and radio. People are looking for guidance and a steady rock to cling on to. This means that if you have a relevant story to tell there’s never been a better time to reach out to your customers and core audiences than right now!

The core thing to keep in mind here is of course that the Old Media are by their very nature geared towards Branding, and thus, -though it’s not really scientifically-rock solid-proven-effective in generating revenue- it is a perfect instrument to instill customer thrust in your brand, if handled the right way and in conjunction with Social Media Marketing and other forms of Online Marketing.

The key challenge would be timing, as you wouldn’t want to have a multi-million dollar tagline -Here Today, Where Tomorrow?- proven meaningless overnight…

One way to manage your Marketing budget would be to higher or lower it every Financial Quarter, in a wave as it were, analyzing the results and reacting accordingly. Moreover reallocate the money spent on different channels based on campaign directive. So, depending on the field or sector your operating in, decrease the amount of money spend on Branding through offline channels and shift the resulting saved money towards Online Results Based Marketing, such as SEA and in optimizing the Task Completion Rate by Primary Purpose on your website…

Yep, I’m not advising you to plainly look at Conversion Rates, I’m suggesting to take a more holistic approach ;) Back in 2006 Google’s visionairy Web Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik already foresaw that the Focus (should be) Shifting from Conversion to Task Completion Rate by Primary Purpose.

Upcoming Interactive Channels that haven´t quite fully lived up to their potential yet like Social Media and Mobile are likely to be confronted with closed wallets and plummeting ad spending, not just because of advertisers cutting back in costs and investments, but also because the consumers themselves are being hesitant to spend money on luxury products and services including Mobile Internet and Mobile Wireless Internet Devices.

Yet again here it would be wise to be wary of and avoid the FUD; for example here in the Netherlands the mobile version of the largest news website Nu.nl (translated: Now.nl) is also the largest mobile news site. It is known that CTR’s in mobile enhanced sites are up to 7% or even higher, putting Display efforts on the desktop internet to shame; so though it’s understandable to make a Pavlov Reaction and eschew Mobile altogether, the contrary might be a better move. Whether your campaign is geared towards gaining a high CTR in the first place is of course a different thing altogether (I’d beg to differ, basing a campaign on CTR alone isn’t the most cost-effective way of spending your Marketing Euro).

As for Social Media, as I’ve pointed out at the beginning of this post: Your target audience, consumers and people in general aren’t going to be less critical, or dependent of peer advice and ratings and they’ll definitely be looking for bargain deals on price comparison communities, so keep joining that conversation!

There’s an interesting e-mailing debate on the Signal vs. Noise blog. Now I mostly agree with some of the business philosophy of mister Fried and co., and I’ve got a deep respect for what they’ve achieved and the way they did it, but the idea of trying out new e-mail designs First before applying a design overhaul to the website based thereon is inane.

Though I can sympathize with the “Process-Breaking-Possible-Mind-Freeing” idea behind the post, there are two obvious pitfalls Jamie (the author) is unaware of, both stemming from a misguided thought pattern.

1. Conversion and Marketing Strategy
The author is putting Form over Function, Tactic above Strategy and Outcome before Process.

There’s a good reason why

“…emails have their conceptual birth in another medium altogether: a Catalog, an Advertisement, or the Website.”

And why

“The concept and strategy was already finalized before it goes to (the web designer). At that point it was all about production.”

Please read the whole 37Signals post and the discussion here for some more context.

Strategy ultimately leads to Production and not the other way around, for all the obvious reasons.

That being said, let’s try to break down the raison d’être of E-mail Marketing once more, starting off with a fundamental question: Strategy and communication plan aside,

Why send out an e-mailing in the first place?

Your sending out an e-mailing to stimulate your reader base to take action (on your website), be it either:

• Reading the latest news (gaining you the required eyeballs for advertising revenue);
• Signing up for a service;
• Filling in a survey;
• Updating their profile (both offering more accurate targeting = opportunity to add more relevancy);
• Buying a product;
• Booking a ticket or
• Simply just showing your appreciation for them being such loyal customers…

Whatever your primary motives may be, you’re mainly sending out that mail to communicate to your (potential) customers in order to generate higher conversion rates.

Make them click! That’s your core Sub-Goal*.

Your sole priority lies there, design details such as shadow and rounded corners are superfluous and should be geared towards supporting you in reaching that goal, not detract from it. Your main objective is not to go against all logical and proven processes by designing a fancy e-mail template as a way of alpha-testing a possible future website redesign.

It’s the message and the call-to-actions therein that count, and though it doesn’t hurt to have a neatly designed mailing, it’s a waste of your efforts if you spend too much time on art instead of investing it in sensible e-Copywriting. In other words: “Substance Over Style, please m’am”.

The only exception here is when you’re Crowdsourcing your website re-design and have a dedicated address list of people that are aching to be part of the drive testing(process) or if your regular subscribers have given you Permission to do so. If such is the case, don’t forget to add a feedback button in there as well…

This approach allows you to obtain valuable feedback because people are consciously paying attention to the careful alterations you make to your template, whereas in all other cases some people are bound to take notice of the gradual changes somewhere down the line and probably think you don’t have a clue about what your doing…

[* Note that I said "sub goal" deliberately, because an e-mailing is a part of your communication plan and thus should support your overall Marketing Strategy. Seeing a pattern here?]

2. Consistent Authentic Branding
The second pitfall was correctly pointed out by a comment in the thread from none other than Seth Godin himself. 37Signals has a reputation of having a very unique and dare I say intimate bond with their customers/users.

Part of their reputation, appeal and charm lies in the passionate and practical way they look at how to improve a business process and how to get rid of excess weight, so to speak. And more often than not, the sluggish corporate way of doing business is at the receiving end of their rants and riffs.

Unless your target audience is expecting it from you, suddenly adding a standard Corporate styled e-mailing in the communication mix isn’t going to strengthen that relationship. On the contrary; you’re actually running a huge risk of erecting an invisible wall between yourself and your clientele.

Other than that, this operation could turn out to be a “me-too” approach for 37Signals: Since they’d be stopping with communicating in a personal (and their very own Getting Real) way, the receivers might unconsciously end up getting a change of attitude towards them; leading to a loss of sympathy over time, which ultimately leads to less loyalty and brand connection. Stay authentic, be consistent.

Have I already mentioned that the suggested Inversed Strategy approach isn’t conversion centred?

When I’m subscribing to a newsletter I expect (nay, want!) a clean and simple, (mobile device friendly!) swiftly-loading mail in my inbox, communicating a focused, relevant and -in this particular case- personal message. That’s the way I got charmed by & connected with your brand in the first place.

It’d be a waste to ruin the expectations and experience of your target audience and clients by giving in to a (misguided) personal desire for creative freedom.

If it’s more creative freedom you want, it’d be much wiser to start thinking about rearranging your career, instead of rearranging a proven process or something as fragile as your E-mailing Brand Equity.

Two things I’d like to discuss after seeing this and reading the article by Jeremiah from Forrester as I believe that in his enthusiasm about this initiative he’s forgotten to take a few important factors into account.

Number One:

This is an outstanding example of using Social Media to co-create a buzz and empower the community that you’d like to connect with to spread a message. The mind boggles:

Can you imagine using this example of Social Media and applying it to, say Employer Branding, to engage the ever elusive, out-of-reach prospects and candidates?  You could challenge them to go out and create an advertisement, mini-site, whatever, that shows their values and thus their desired dream job. This would give you very useful insights into what candidates really are looking for when moving on to a new job and gives your organization not only a shot at starting a meaningful conversation with them, but at free publicity as well.

Number Two:

Though this may seem at first as a big step forward in the way advertisers see, treat and engage with their target audience, there’s one Big Question people tend to overlook: It’s an intermediately great PR stunt, especially for Dell, but will it draw in more customers or change the attitudes of the target audience towards Dell in particular?

Personally I don’t believe so and here’s why: If I’m going to buy a € 1.200 + desktop or spend around the same amount of dosh on say a notebook, what are the key selling points for me? What are the conscience and subconscious decision making processes that I walk through before pulling my wallet? These are in random order and depending on whether like me you’re a power user or not;

• 1. Functionality -does it meet your user requirements (family PC? Design workstation Powerhouse? Gaming Dark Horse?);
• 2. Absolute Quality -what do the tests in the specialist press say, does it run Vista as it should? Etc..
• 3. Perceived Quality -how does the specialist press, the fora and/or the influencers in your direct vicinity talk about and review the product;
• 4. Brand Thrust/Reputation- some people are real fanboys when it comes to their gadgets, clothes or means of transportation;

The Total Cost of Ownership and the budget are of course other factors that weigh in when making such a decision.

Now when we take a look at the list above we must conclude that there’s no way that getting a few fanboys/artists/creative professionals or students to participate in such an endeavor  is going to noticeably up your sales now or in the near future. At any rate it’s not measurable.

So then we must make an educated guess that for Dell “hard sales” probably isn’t the main KPI for this campaign. So, the main goal of their campaign must be… branding. If that is the case than whatever way you’d look at it they’ve achieved at least the following:

• Free PR;
• Innovative and creative profile in the creative community, the media industry and in their own Tech sector, early adopters and influencers;
• Creative, friendly, innovative and non-corporate image towards the participants and their direct social hemisphere.

Now these are all great things to achieve, especially for Dell, I for one have personally never really been a fan of them as a customer so I must admit that I was positively surprised by this move and that it could reflect a change in the way they operate. But does  it change their helpdesk or their customer service, does it make the quality of their products and services any better?

No it does not and that’s wherein the threat lies: This -for Dell- high profile action could backfire on them in a big and ugly way, unless they manage to keep their story authentic and consequent along the whole chain, from product quality up to customer service. In other words: Live up to your promise Dell.

If they don’t succeed in doing so than all of this was nothing more than a nice exercise of what could be and a reminder of why online / social media strategy shouldn’t be an afterthought but part of your total business plan to begin with.

On the other hand it’s heartening to see that molochs such as Dell are willing to take these kind of innovative steps and are showing that they’ve at least got the intention to be willing to reach out and really get in touch with the consumer. These are exciting times indeed.

“Zeven op de tien managers en professionals zoeken via internet naar informatie over leveranciers. De helft gebruikt internet voor het opvragen van offertes, het plaatsen van orders en het vergelijken van leveranciers.”

Bron: Ernst & Young ICT Barometer (PDF)

70% van de beslissers in B2B: Rendeert jouw website?

Repeat after me: In connecting with the consumer there are no shortcuts. PR Week reports on Web ‘fakery’ law change.

In a nutshell it finally puts an end to sock-puppeting and astro-turfing, in the UK. Now the following is wishful thinking on my part, but wouldn’t it be nice if this law could be instated as a standard all across the world?

The only negative point I can raise regarding this new regulation, is the very fact that’s it’s a law and thus that the industry failed to be self-regulatory: Aside from the moral stance we can take in this as honest, progressive thinking digerati AND as a consumer -e.g. that it’s wrong for a company or organization to lie and deceive or manipulate the very people that they’d want to sustainably connect with- I find it actually almost unbelievable that there are still marketers/strategists and indeed organizations out there today who are willing to use such methods! Forgotten how for example Sony’s attempt to do so with a PSP-Blog backfired immensely on them a few years back?

Question: Do you enjoy it when you find out that someone you trust has cheated or lied to you and that they did this just because they thought they could and to selfishly further their own good? Thought so. As a human being you don’t like being cheated, nobody does, and since you’re trying -on behalf of your organization- to connect with other human beings, act concordantly. You’re the professional who knows what he or she is talking about when it comes to connecting with the consumers, so convince PR, Branding, Strategy, The Board, the CEO… Whoever gave out the order, why this is akin to shooting yourself in the foot with a bazooka and then show them the alternatives that do work.

“Oh so now it’s about 2.0 and connecting, and we’re a bit low on budget, so I have this great idea: Weblogs and forums are considered 2.0 and those flashy sites are about communicating, but people are posting all kinds of negative comments about our customer service and all, so why don’t we start a conversation there? The catch is; we’re the only participants and by “we” I actually mean “me”: I’ll post a topic and then I’ll post all the comments! This way we’re on the cutting edge of communication in the middle of our target audience AND we’re still in control of our brand.”
Sorry pal, but you’re not in control of your brand. You never have been actually, only now with the advent of the internet and social media this wisdom has become more apparent, a commodity.

“I’m talking zero investment here: Only a few man-hours to write the script and post it and maybe a little monitoring afterwards, the remaining budget can go to banner placements in context with the posts; surefire traffic I’m telling ya!”</Insert Sly Wink here>
Dude this is going to cost you and your brand more than just the low budget, especially in the mid- and long-term, you’re going to look at a negative ROI.

“Huh? B-but… We’re connecting right? We’re not just “sending” anymore and -and hey we’re broadcasting on the Social Media! …Err Right?”

Newsflash: It’s about communicating and connecting with your target audience in an authentic way and hopefully conquering their minds and hearts leading to the possibility that they may become, over time, your ambassador, so you can then empower them to do so in ways that they deem most fit. In all honesty and openness.

But of course to do that, you’d need at least two crucial things: First; an open minded, progressive thinking marketer/strategist and second; a product or service that doesn’t suck. And though you may not see the effects or end results immediately, if either of these two key components is missing, than your organization is in deep serious trouble. Thing is, the trouble doesn’t always come as a bang, but could just as well creep up as a whisper and no cheap postings on user-forum and blogs is going to silence or stop either of them…

As always a sense of urgency always comes when it’s either too late or unnecessary damage has already been done. A real shame, more so because thinking about authentic ways to enthuse the consumer is actually a lot of fun and, if it works, worth a whole lot more to brag about at birthday parties afterwards ;)