Are big brands the new gods?

One of the greatest feats of modern advertising is the ability to seep into every facet of our modern lives, no longer limited to traditional media like television and print, new media is the next frontier, with campaigns reaching deep into the latest tools we use to communicate. Email marketing floods the inbox, Facebook spits out targeted banners and clever viral apps, Twitter is bombarded by promotional “tweets” and soon just walking near a Starbucks will alert us to the free cookie we’ll get with every coffee – the delights of GPS and new mobiles phones!

The point is advertising needs to continually re-invent itself to deal with its own self-made enemy: saturation. Futurelab recently presented this succinctly, saying:

People who live near train lines adjust to the noise. They do the same with advertising.
Futurelab – Change Marketing

So even the most viral of ads, even the savviest of ad placements have the converse effect of educating us – meaning we get increasingly discerning and harder to convince.

The upside of this downside is we’re going to see a lot less of those full-blown “cinematic” production ads – the slick sports car in surreal landscapes, cornering at torque speed; shiny happy people overcoming all obstacles in record time with the help of the gleaming new product.

Why? Because the formula is predictable and fails to convince as it once did – so backed into the corner, good marketing practice becomes more about finding and presenting what’s authentic in a brand.

Take for example “content marketing” advocated by marketing expert David Meerman Scott, he throws out the ROI obsessions and aims to build genuine consumer trust. There’s no real sales pitch either, it’s about educating prospects with relevant, valuable and engaging content.

You’ve got to think in terms of spreading ideas, not generating leads. A World Wide Rave gets the word out to thousands or even millions of potential customers. But only if you make your content easy to find and consume
David Meerman Scott – World Wide Rave

A good example is the recent Razorfish 2009 outlook document – because of its insightful content on digital marketing, it’s hit my inbox a few times and if looking to refresh my digital strategies, Razorfish has positioned itself nicely as an authority and without any direct sales pitch (also spreading their message even further right here).

The catch-22 is that today’s cynical consumers judge this type of marketing as authentic only when there’s no underlying monetary agenda – but isn’t ROI and actual sales why we market in the first place? Yes, but more importantly, if our marketing matches our product, there’s not need for the marketing veneer – it already is authentic.

Great. But my product isn’t cool – What can I do??? – Well, Frankly you’re screwed.
Futurelab – What’s Next In Marketing & Advertising

So, what makes a product cool? If we take Seth Godin’s approach – anything that creates meaning, a sense of identity and a connection to others builds a following (a tribe). If the tribe likes it – its cool. The communal spirit of the iPod garbed masses packed into subways and lining our streets is a classic example of how a product became not only cool, but an global phenomenon.

There’s a real religious inkling to Godin’s ideas on tribes, especially as religion for a lot of people is the ultimate path of seeking connection, authenticity and meaning.

It begs the question: Do brands need to become cultural gods, in order to survive? And if so, are their devotes the ultimate consumers? What are your thoughts…

References

David Meerman Scott
World Wide Rave
http://www.worldwiderave.com

Futurelab
Change Marketing
http://www.slideshare.net/Futurelab/change-marketing-v01-1452235

Seth Godin
Seth’s Blog
http://sethgodin.typepad.com

Razorfish
2009 Digital Outlook Report
http://digitaloutlook.razorfish.com/publication/?i=13617

DOUGLAS B. HOLT
Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and Branding
http://www.lombard-media.lu/pdf/0308_brands.pdf

Debunking Jakob Neilson

Usability gurus like Jakob Neilson are ongoing proponents of the idea that websites are about getting information – a website is only as good as how effectively it transfers information to the user.

In the early 2000’s Neilson wrote:

Ultimately users visit your website for its content. Everything else is just the backdrop. The old analogy is somebody who goes to see a theatre performance: When they leave the theatre, you want them to be discussing how great the play was and not how great the costumes were.

Neilson’s approach comes from a user centered design model, more commonly called “usability”. Usability is concerned with how easy it is for users to complete the tasks a website is designed for. A website works when users get to where they want to go without hindrance or as Steven Krug has popularized: websites work when they “don’t make [you] think”. Thinking is obviously not the desired effect for good websites.

If we take this approach to its logical end, we might expect the internet to be intravenously injected straight into our minds – no unnecessary design or artistic fluff to get in the way of good content and certainly no thinking required!

To be fair though, Neilson and followers have done their bit to lead the mass exodus away from glossy brochure style sites (nice for billboards / magazines but almost useless for websites), and non-human designed sites like those attempting to fit a whole encyclopedia into one never ending long scrolling web page.

What is often left out of the usability debate is that the internet is not just a deliverer of external content, but has become more a medium in itself – with its own content and set of rules. The whole Web 2.0 phenomena makes use of and makes money out of this very fact.

It’s difficult to pin-point an exact definition of Web 2.0 but broadly speaking it describes sites that leverage the dynamic and collaborative nature of the internet. Sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are populated with a constant flow of user-generated content. Static Web 1.0 sites have a 1 directional flow of information similar to traditional publishing models like newspapers and television. Web 2.0 is different by being able to offer information (and advertising) apparently more relevant to the user, based on how he / she interacts with and contributes to these sites.

So, how do we apply Neilson’s premise to Web 2.0 websites?

Most people just want to get in, get it and get out… the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool
Neilson, 2007

The problem here is that a growing number of people are using the internet (especially social Web 2.0 sites) with vague intentions – not always looking for something specific. For instance we might be online to make conversation, browse with no particular goal in mind or just passing time when we’re meant to be working.

If we need to determine a goal, we might just as well ask why is it we do anything social? A lot of people are just looking for a way to feel a part of something bigger – perhaps looking for a community of like-minded people to relate to in a safe and non-intrusive environment.

It’s here where the a task-based usability model falls short (when specific tasks can’t be so clearly defined). What is needed is a way of determining social engagement – how engaged are your users when online on your particular site? How well did the experience imitate real social interactions?

References

Steven Krug
Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach-Usability/dp/0789723107

Jakob Nielsen
Designing Web Usability
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Usability-VOICES-Jakob-Nielsen/dp/156205810X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242705058&sr=1-1

Jakob Nielsen
Web 2.0 ‘neglecting good design’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6653119.stm

the next big thing

I went to the adtech Sydney – it was a 2 day conference on digital advertising – where we are now and were to. I’ve got a few pages of notes, I’m not going to refer to in preference of giving my over all impressions.

Basically the sessions got me thinking – a good thing (some might say), as ideas are what makes me get inspired (the food was quite uninspiring though).

A really interesting point (from Nick Brien’s talk) got the brain firing – the idea that crisis situations (really economic crisis here) brings about innovation, generates new ideas – a ripe time for invention out of necessity is upon us! The pressure must really make us get creative. So rather than see doom and gloom we could be asking ourselves what opportunities are available now. It’s a new market with new needs. Where there’s gaps there’s new money to be made (and there’s a lot more gaps because the landscape has changed so much, so the old is less likely to work in the same way).

What else? Well a large part of the conference discussed the emergence of social media as a powerful platform tipping the relevance of traditional media. Everyone that took this line was careful not to discount traditional media, but generally speaking a big billboard or a TVC alone just won’t have the same influence it once did. It’s about trust, Sharyn Smith from Soup put it something like: without too much thought, we’d buy that detergent our mum recommends but we’d need a lot more convincing if a recommendation comes from a brand.

Case in point – my wife did her internet research for a stroller, blog after blog after forum, wiki etc etc she found the perfect stroller (a lot of mum’s liked it). She hardly looked at the actual sites that offered the product she was interested in. So apparently the destination page is really not that important after all. The deeper point is that products and campaigns need to stand up to our ever demanding need and ability to recognize the authentic, human element – if it can’t stand up to this, it’s likely to fall especially in this demanding economy.

One last point, web 2.0 is dying so welcome mobile / portable / social web 3.0 – mix it with social media that better mimics our psychosocial behaviors and there exists the next big thing.

3 Online Marketing tips for the new economy

What’s online marketing got to do with happiness in the workplace – well without a lot of business, things like happiness at work take a step back, marketing too. So marketing, as significant driver of business keeps things going. The interesting thing is a lot of the techniques online gurus swear by is about using the age old technique of integrity. 

The fact that we’re so inundated every day with marketing messages infiltrating our online personal spaces, means we all get very well trained on how to spot a sales pitch disguised as something other than it is. We’re all experts and can spot a duozey a mile away (what if you responded to every spammy email that hits your in-box?) 

So what’s the trick then – just a bit of integrity. If it’s good say so. If not, perhaps its best to find something worth selling!

Here’s my very brief list of some good tools for 2009:

1. Make use of social media – social media works as it replicates interaction with ‘real’ personalities – this aids trust and most of us will listen to a person over a cleverly crafted sales pitch. Read this article about Social media in 2009: http://www.scribd.com/doc/8944081/Social-Media-2009
2. Risk to say it boldly – Create online copy that risks an influx of comments and links (a form of link-baiting: http://www.jimwestergren.com/link-bait/ ). If you think it, say it boldly – stirring emotion will also stir activity
3. Automate lead generation – There’s some many simple online applications on the net right now that really reduce management time and lower costs – the trick is crafting things like email autoresponders with the same warm familiarity of a face to face meeting or phone call.

Here’s a few:

http://www.scribd.com (documents online)

http://www.basecamphq.com/ (online project management)

http://www.freshbooks.com (online invoicing)

http://www.pixelalchemy.com.au (Yes this is my plug – Develop a site with Business Console and integrate all your business systems into 1 – email marketing / auto responders / CRM / Online Sales / Website / Blog / Forums – It’s really how each of these things link together seamlessly that’s so exciting about this product )

http://www.3minuteangels.com (with all this cold hard computer stuff, lets not forget the power of touch – send a potential lead and Angel, warm them up to some good ideas of yours)

do we really know what we want?

I’m sure you’ve heard about the basic premise of creating your own reality popularised by things like “the secret” – about how everyone can envision the life they want and all the sucess and happiness will just roll on in. The question I think worth asking is: “do we really know what we want?” 

Of course I do, yes more security, money, love etc. etc.

OK, lets imagine a world where everybody get exactly what they want – would conflict still exist? What if two people envisioned acquiring the same thing, say the love of another person,  a job position, that particular house on the beach – things that are kind of exclusive, not really up for sharing. What then? 

Easily resolved – each person shoots off into separte alternative realities and the conflict is all resolved.

I’m going to follow this logic futher whether its far fetched or not –  each reality has the person who gets what they want but in each alternative there’s still a dissapointed person. So really the conflict is not resolved. Also, I’d really need to be certain what I’m envisioning now is what I’ll be wanting in the future because if I did get this wrong I’d be setting my self up for dissapointment too. 

The thing with all this envisioning is it also leans at little on the side of avoidance – espace the difficult. However, the value in difficult situations is they tend to shake us up, move us to re-evalute, help us strip down to fundamentals allowing us to know ourselves more fully. Would I choose a difficult situation if I really had this level of  control? I doubt it – why would I? Unknowingly I’d also miss out on real opportuinities to grow.

Kerouac, Financial Crisis and forks

Was not the best time to ask for a pay rise, but I did and how did it go? We’ll it’s the financial crisis and a lot of people are losing jobs – some ready to jump off buildings, so no, not the best time.

I read something of Jack Kerouac’s writing style. Apparently he wrote “On the road” in 2 weeks. The basic style was a trust in the stuff that just comes out – so this is somewhat like this (forgive me if my thoughts jump a little)

Anyway, perhaps in times of strife in a climate of uncertainty – perhaps a trust in whatever life stuff comes our way is worth having. Why? We’ll a fear of uncertainty sure won’t bring certainty back.

There might be a good thing in such a fork in the road. Good opportunity to start something that the padding of security locked us away from. A business that offers simple cost-effective solutions is something that going hit off.

The choices we make while we’re here

Today I read something profound written in a blog by my Father. He doesn’t often talk about his deeper thoughts – he’s more likely to reminisce about funny situations or people than get into a discussion about the meaning of life or in this case what’s after life. Besides not always seeing eye to eye, I’ve always respected my Father’s quiet wisdom, humbleness and open heart that he never needed to put on display. So it didn’t surprise me when I asked my mother if he told her about the experience – “no, he didn’t say anything to me about it…”

I don’t really know what to say about it, other than I got shivers when I read it and it changed my outlook for the rest of day. It made me think about life – what might be after it, my past relatives – the choices I make while I’m here.

Soon I will have a son or daughter (I’ll know for sure in 4 days), I’d be happy to know that he or she would think of me in the same way.

Thanks Dad for sharing this.

Contributions

I had a thought, I’d like to open this blog here for contributors. Would be interesting to have a discussion about things related to corporate happiness- not just about getting comments but a document of a variety of viewpoints on a broad but significant topic, especially in this time of uncertainty.

So what is “Corporate Happiness”? – Please tell me…

I know that a lot of people facing redundancy, the cost of living is not going down anytime soon, the outlook for business is generally not great – with so much to worry about, how is job fulfillment still a concern?

Perhaps happiness or fulfillment is not a term to define so easily.

Here are some topics worth discussing:

- The financial crisis
- globalisation
- Job security
- Job fulfillment
- work happiness
- productivity
- dealing with stress etc.etc.

And what’s in it for you:

- A profile page feed into 3 Minute Angels – a high traffic site
- Intellectual stimulation
- A platform to generate interest and discussion….

Fulfilled is by following his mission?

Sitting at work right now, thinking about how to write a quick piece about some recent happenings in the corporate happiness musing space I have here. I’ve talked a bit on Deida before – he’s the guy who likes the idea of gender poles remaining obvious – a man is most happy moving towards the archetypal man (but being a man doesn’t necessarily make you inclined towards that archetype and vice-versa – you could be a woman trapped inside a man’s body for instance).

But not to confuse things further, here’s a short summary (from the man’s perspective): The way the male is fulfilled is by following his mission, a personal quest that moves him towards his uniqueness as a person. In other words, the very thing that sets one apart (might be things that rub the wrong way out in the open plains of society) should be pursued with a fire in the belly.

But in the real world of responsibility, finding time to pursue this uniqueness ( where is this anyway?) seems a task for the privileged. Anyway, Deida still acknowledges the importance of at least 1 hr a day of dedication – that’s good news for me.

So I’ve been attempting this.

Here’s whats happening so far:

http://www.thelastwizard.com

Corporate Culture and Spirituality

This is a good post I found on You Tube. I’ve always wanted to steer clear of the word “spiritual” – perhaps it’s just open to too many different interpretations that it loses meaning… Are there other ways to describe what is talked about in the movie below? 

Here’s the discussion which led to this