Social Media Archives - Beg to Differ

5 ways Social Media is changing branding forever

Brand managers: Social Media is here to stay. Deal with it.

Beg to Differ gets asked three related questions all the time: should brand managers really care about this Social Media thing? Isn’t it just a flavour-of-the-month fad? Does it really change anything in the branding universe? The answers: Yes. No. Oh merciful heavens: YES! Here’s why.

Sea change: just another great turning point (Turner's Trafalgar)

1) Push marketing is dead (along with the other P’s)

Remember the old “Four P’s of Marketing” – Product, price Promotion, doctor Price, and Placement? They’re dead. Or rather, they all still play a role in marketing, but the big assumption behind them is dead – what I call the “Silent Fifth P”: PUSH.

It’s just not enough to buy a gazillion dollar ad on the SuperBowl and just watch your earnings roll in (although to be fair, it never really was). With the massive proliferation of content sources and the corresponding death of the old “big media” model, you just have to work harder today than you ever did before.

The trick for brand managers: learn to stop pushing and start listening to the real owners of your brand: your customers.

2) The owners are speaking; can you hear them?

Last month, Senior VP of Marketing Clyde Tuggle summarized the big lesson learned from the New Coke fiasco 25 years ago: “You don’t own your brand; your customers do.” (Great summary here).

If that was true then (and it was), it is painfully obvious now, as the owners of your brand have a louder and more sophisticated voice than ever. And when things go wrong for a brand like Toyota or United Airlines, you don’t have time for old fashioned PR damage control: these bad vibes are travel at the speed of human thought.

The trick for brand managers: make sure you are using Social Media to build a) communities of support and b) the capability to respond.

3) Crowd-sourced creative is changing the game

There is a lot of hand-wringing in traditional advertising and design circles about this stuff – witness this blow-up from our favourite brand design blog Brand New or the comments on this 2009 Beg to Differ post.

The dirty word being used here is “spec work” – that is, companies that should be able to pay a professional to do this stuff are instead using contests or other means to get creative work from a broader range of players. And while I’m a big believer in paying people for a good day’s work, I also think that the debate sounds a bit too much like the music industry going after 12-year olds who download MP3’s. It kind of misses the point.

The trick for brand managers: how can you use the power of crowd-sourcing (without burning too many bridges)?

4) Open-source branding will change research

But the idea of crowd-sourcing goes way beyond getting a logo from 99designs.com. It is actually changing the raw DNA of brands by throwing open the gates of the branding process to all interested members of the brand’s audience.

It’s similar to the Open Source movement in software – except the “code” being exposed is the values, character, and passions of your customers for your brand. (Great summary from Ryan Anderson here).

A couple of recent examples: this Google research cleverly packaged as a YouTube viral video, the A Brand for London project, or Fluevog.

The trick for brand managers: how can you tie open source ideas into your brand management routines? (Hint: call these guys for ideas).

5) Humility is sexy again

Have you noticed the new tone in advertising lately – led by the newly humbled auto industry? It seems like companies are racing each other to out-humble each other. And that can only be a good thing.

The trick for brand managers: maybe it’s time to stop telling your customers how great you are. It doesn’t work on a first date, and it certainly doesn’t work in a relationship. The alternative? In the immortal words of Otis Redding: Try a Little Tenderness.

Jumping the FailWhale: Twitter’s biggest problems

This morning’s Twitter outage, symptoms is only one of the many problems facing brand Twittter. Back in June, order early in my Twitter career (yes, the Twitterverse is turning quickly my friends) I blogged about this – No Twitter Brand, what are YOU doing? But now that I’ve had time to think about this some more (thanks for the outage Twitter!), I’ve got some more thoughts – all of which require more than 140 characters.

Aquatic superstar rising (falling?)... Just one of the great fanart images at www.failwhale.com.

Over the next week or two, I’ll deal with 3 major brand credibility problems Twitter is facing, followed by a set of solutions I’ll modestly put forward.

The Jumping the Failwhale series: Twitter’s biggest problems

Problem 1: Brand Promise: (in this post – see below) the free ride will have to end, and the real owners of the Twitter brand will not be pleased.
Problem 2: Brand Character: (coming soon) Twitter feels more “Social” and less like serious “Media”. Basically, the boss ain’t buying it, and unless something changes, he may be right.
Problem 3: Brand Personality: (coming soon)Despite the fresh, breezy cartoon-graphics, the kids aren’t twittering. Twitter is fast becoming an old people’s brand and the problem is hard-wired into the product.
Solutions: (coming soon) My 10 Recommendations to save Twitter.

Problem 1: Brand Promise. The free ride will end.

A Brand Promise is the implicit set of expectations a brand builds up in the mind of its customers over time. And just like a real-world promise, the owner of the promise (and indeed the brand itself) is the person to whom the promise is made: the customer.

The promise of Twitter

Twitter users have come to value, and expect, a free, open online community accessible to all with 1) an Internet connection and 2) enough time to cultivate a Twitter brand of your own.

The problem with this is that of course, the party can’t go on like this forever. There are real world implications to the scale of Twitter’s success. Yup, I mean big crashes like this morning. But more to the point: money / revenue / filthy lucre / a basic business model. This is of course a no-brainer, because it’s a problem with all Social Media. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, and a thousand other online communities and services have built their huge audiences fast on the same implicit promise.

Try it, use it forever, and pay nothing – with no ads – all of these are very attractive hooks to get people in. But having set those expectations in customers’ minds, no one should be surprised if they feel betrayed if you suddenly try to “monetize” their “eyeballs”. Oh, they’ll understand. But this isn’t about rational thought; it’s about a broken promise.

I can hear the objection: “but we never said it would be free forever”. Doesn’t matter. Your actions led them to expect it would be free forever, which in their mind is the same thing.

A summer-friendly analogy

Imagine that one day I mow my neighbour’s lawn, then laugh off any payment he might offer by saying “that’s what neighbours do”. Don’t you think it would make him happy and strengthen our neighbourly bond? Probably. As long as he didn’t suspect my motives.

Which leads me to the following week, when I tell him “I’ve decided that the price of gas being what it is, you either have to pay me a dollar to do it again, or listen to a 5 minute pitch for my business.”

He’ll understand. He might even recognize that it’s a really good deal I’m offering. But do you think he’d be happy about it?

An example from my practice

We dealt with this issue last year while I was acting Vice President of Marketing at CoursePark.com – an online learning management network. We played around with a number of options, from totally free access (like Facebook or Twitter), to pay-per-use, or just a low-cost subscription. Our solution in the end: give users a free-forever option, but a) be very clear what the limits were, b) set clear prices on the commercial e-learning content we sold through our library, c) give them an expanded range of capabilities for free in exchange for sharing their content with the rest of CoursePark, and d) make it easy and transparent to allow them to upgrade to the “enterprise” version for larger programs / more support / more member controls.

The bottom line

Be careful what you promise (even implicitly); your customers will hold you too it.
If you’re building a business, people are cool with that – if they know your motives in advance.
If you have built expectations that you can’t sustain, don’t assume that you can change the rules at will. You will pay for it.

Of skateboards & stripping poles: thoughts on the Mitsubishi City Chase brand

Last Saturday, remedy my brother Brent and I ran and rode OC Transpo buses all over Ottawa. Along the way, we (over) acted in soap opera, skateboarded, played croquet, danced around stripper poles (no nudity involved – this year), and ate really, really gross stuff. Not a normal Saturday for us or the more than 900 other participants – but all part of the fun in the Ottawa edition of the Mitsubishi City Chase urban adventure series. Which got me thinking about brands. Surprised?

My brother Brent and I still looking fresh(ish) at the beginning of the day.

Modeled on the same idea as the “Amazing Race” reality TV show, the CityChase is positioned as a “One-day Urban Adventure Challenge”. “Chasers” (as we’re called) are given a clue sheet at the outset, then have to choose between 10 challenges or “Chasepoints” spread throughout the city. And challenges can range from whitewater paddling to rapelling down a building to eating bugs or other stuff with a high “ick” factor. Chasers can only use foot-power or public transit, and are allowed to use cellphones or smartphones with no limit on the amount of help you can get. This is the third year Brent and I have entered, and it’s a riot.

But since this is a blog about brand strategy, I’ll offer a few thoughts on CityChase branding and marketing.

Brand elements that work:

The name. “CityChase” is a great name. It’s descriptive enough to give you a strong sense of what it’s about (“Chasing” around a city), but the unusual term “chase” lends it enough character to a) force you to think about / explain / start a conversation about it, b) create a memorable impression, c) act as a strong, ownable trademark, d) create natural insider language (GO CHASERS!), and d) lends itself well to sponsor extensions – Mitsubishi here, Samsung and National Geographic overseas.

The logo: like the name, simple, strong. The arrow icon won’t win any design awards, but its placement on the right side of the wordmark, along with the small opening on the right create just enough distinctiveness to allow the organizers to use it as a repeated design element (as in the shirts above).

The sponsors: because it appeals to young, fit urban types 25-45 years old, and because the whole day is about combining fitness, fun, and technology, there are a huge range of opportunities to highlight sponsors in a way that doesn’t seem forced or unnatural. And do I fee better and more in tune with the Mitsubishi and BlackBerry brands after spending a day with them? Yeah. I do.

Local exposure: but even better, because the Chase sends us out into urban retail areas, small local brands are able to highlight themselves and draw new people in. Would I normally walk into a Strip Fitness studio? Not on your life. Will I tell my friends about it? You bet.

The promise: It has been summed up by organizers as “you can expect a day of adventure”. And indeed, that’s what we get year after year. For the more competetive, it’s about moving fast, mapping a route, and strategizing. For the average Chaser, it’s about getting out and pushing the boundaries – testing yourself in different ways.

Brand elements that need attention:

Web site & social media: For a brand that’s built for a high-tech savvy audience, the Web site is pretty clunky, and the Social Media efforts are getting better, but need to be better coordinated as part of the experience. For example, while there are 1100 members of the relatively active MCC Facebook fan site, on Twitter, @citychase has only 215 followers. Why? Because a) they don’t follow anyone back, b) they only use it as a “mesage blast” medium, not as a conversation among co-enthusiasts, and c) they don’t use the opportunity to live tweet or hold CityChase themed TweetUps between events.

Logistics: two years in a row, after waiting several days for the results online, my brother and I have had our ranking assigned to other people. Last year we were 11th, and this year 12th, so we’d love to send the link to friends and family (and further extend the brand!), but this looks like we didn’t finish. We’re coming back next year, but these kinds of problems make it difficult to be unqualified in our praise.

I need to be less clumsy: I think the annotated picture below says sit all.

News item from last year in Philly – does a good job of explaining the Chase.

No, Twitter brand: what are YOU doing?

Okay, dosage confession time. As an emerging Twitter devotee, page (@denvan) I’ve been “drinking the Kool-Aid” of the Twitter brand for too long to really be objective about their brand strategy. I’m a tribe member now, viagra 100mg and I’ve learned the buzzwords, tools, and idiosyncrasies of this social media monster. But as a brand strategy geek, I also hear rumblings of trouble in the Twitterverse that I can’t ignore…

As I encounter more and more fellow “tweeps” (a word about insider language later) and have the same old “what the heck is Twitter GOOD for” conversation, the more I begin to wonder about different aspects of the Twitter brand package – are the elements holding together? Do they make sense? Could this be why we learned yesterday that Twitter’s growth is flat-lining and more than 50% of Twitter accounts are dead? Perhaps.

But let’s start with the good stuff.

What I love about Twitter Branding:

Basically, the thing I like about Twitter is the thing that may kill it in the end: it’s rough around the edges.

Twitter gained my instant affection by making absolutely NO attempt to be slick or professional – in design, messaging, or corporate positioning. The graphics are simple and inviting in a cartoonish-but-zen-elegant way that gives the site class tempered with a sense of humour. Nothing arty farty-highbrow or in-your-face revolutionary here.

Scroll down to the bottom of any twitter.com page and click on About Us and you get the feeling that this thing started in somebody’s garage in 2006, and that they’re hoping to stay there. The main login page is a study in simplicity with only 183 characters in the main body copy (note to Twitter: I could help you get this down to 140. I’m getting REALLY good at that!).

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

Aw shucks. Ain’t that nice?

The whole brand package seems to promise new users a few key things: 1) small (i.e. unintimidating – easy to grasp), 2) fun (breezy tone, quick hits of cool content perhaps) 3) free (not going to take my credit card and sucker-punch me later with weirdo fees), 4) easy (get started – and hooked – fast), 5) social (geared toward social, not “serious” conversations)… and 6) disposable (geard toward a quick pay-off for a small amount of effort).

Which brings us to the potential dark side (spoiler alert: the light sabers are about to change colour!).

The potential problem(s) with Twitter Branding

The problem with sustaining this promise can be expressed in one word: Oprah. Okay, maybe two: Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. All right, three: Oprah, Ashton, and the coming of Summer patio season to the Northern Hemisphere (now THAT’s a social network!!). The first two are problems of scale, that is, reasons for rapid viral growth, while the third is one of the non-brand factors that should lead any sane person to want to get away from the computer or Blackberry (he writes at 5:01 p.m. on a gorgeous Friday evening).

The big question for the Twitter brand is this: can it scale to meet the hype?

In early 2009, Twitter went from cool-kid buzzword to mass market sensation with over 5 million additional new visitors in March – up from 4.3M in February to 9.3M in March. And the growth continued strong into April with the addition of the Great One (Oprah not Gretzky) and the 1 Millionth follower for Kutcher – with the attendant .

And the pressures are only increasing with big serious events like the election in Iran and the attacks in Mumbai, and the pundits trumpeting the game-changing nature of the medium.

And with all that hype, came… a great big collective “HUH?!?” from the new users attracted to the platform.

Because, you see, the Twitter brand is havign trouble emerging from the basement it dug for itself. Its initial brand promises are being met with the problems of massive growth:

Promises Twitter might be breaking

1. Small: sorry Twitter. MILLIONS of users. Repeat that. MILLIONS.

2. Fun: despite the breezy graphics and light tone, Twitter is not fun until you connect with at least one other active human. But for the average newbie, Twitter.com doesn’t do a very good job of helping you understand how to make that first connection (or whay
you’d want to)…

3. Free: for now, but with the weight of so much stuff comes the time cost that mid-market adopters are more likely to factor into the equation. Business users in particular are skeptical that this isn’t just another time-waster for employees, and Twitter doesn’t help itself – starting with the name “Twitter” which is incredibly catchy and viral, but also implies empty, and possibly annoying background chatter.

4. Easy: I like and compulsively use Twitter, but even I barely ever use Twitter.com. TweetDeck and other tools are absolute necessities for anyone serious about the medium. Twitter itself may be Open API-ing itself into obsolescence unless it starts taking the user experience – and more to the point – the IMPRESSION of control that a new user needs – more seriously.

5. Social: This and all the other examples on the site imply that Twitter is just for F2F (Friend-To-Friend) communications. Sample value messages are about delving into the trivial parts of people’s lives, which, as most people find pretty quickly, is not the main content that forms the bulk of Twitter traffic. I’m finding that the most successful Tweeters mix maybe 10-20% personal with maybe 60-70% subject matter expertise and useful cross references, and the rest being current events, trivia, etc. Twitter has outgrown “What are you doing” and has crossed into the realm of “Why are we doing what we’re doing?” and “What does it mean to me?”

6. Disposable: here’s the crux of it for me. By playing up “fun” “easy” and “social” aspects, Twitter’s current brand strategy is focused on “fast-twitch” brand drivers, and missing the most important aspect of the Twitter service: that it takes time, effort, and commitment to really get anything out of the medium. New users see the firehose coming at them, and it’s no surprise they’d be tempted to go elsewhere for a drink.

So how does Twitter tune its brand package to 1) help the newbies get it and get involved, 2) make the case about the serious work values the medium can fulfill, without 3) losing the core values and emotional ties that made the brand attractive in the first place?

Or is it all just a deeper level of brilliance than this poor brand geek can grasp – after all, they’ve got the millions of devoted (and not-so-devoted) users, so something must be working.

That’s a question I throw back to you dear reader. Comment away.