Category Archives: Brand Building

Brand Beliefs and the Facebook Factor

First published May 17, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week I talked about the power of our beliefs to shape our view of the world around us. I also mentioned how our belief constructs impact our view of brands. As luck would have it, two separate pieces crossed my path this week, both of which provide excellent examples of how we may perceive brands, and how marketers often get it wrong when trying to shepherd a brand through the marketplace.

The first piece was “Does Branding Need to be Rebranded?” by Mediapost’s Matt Straz in Online Spin. In it, Matt mentioned the backlash against Sir James Dyson (he of the cool vacuums) when he dared to mention that he doesn’t believe in branding. Now, to clarify, Dyson doesn’t believe in branding the way it’s practiced by many companies, where through sheer force of advertising, their heavily controlled (and often contrived) brand story is theoretically imprinted in your brain.  This isn’t so much branding as brain-washing. Let’s call it “brand-washing.”

But let’s go back to how our beliefs define our view of brands. We use beliefs as a heuristic short cut allowing us to operate efficiently in our world. We form beliefs so we don’t have to endlessly think through every single decision. Beliefs form based on our own experience, but they are also formed based on what we’re exposed to. All this input gets synthesized into a reasonably coherent and remarkably resilient belief. Once in place, this belief guides our action.

So, from our perspective, a brand can be defined as what the buyer believes a brand to be.  In the ad community, there is much debate about the definition of a brand. But, in the final analysis, the only definition of brand that matters is the one that rests in the mind of the buyer. All else are simply inputs into that final mental model, which is created solely by the customer.

James Dyson believes the best of those paths is by producing great products and then letting them speak for themselves. If you create products that consistently exceed expectations, that is enough to build an authentic and enduring brand belief. It’s hard to argue with that logic, and, in fact, it’s what P&G called the Second Moment of Truth with consumers: their experience when your product is in their hands. In this definition, brand is intimately coupled with the product itself.

But, if Dyson is right, why is there an advertising industry at all? Even Dyson buys ads to sell vacuum cleaners. This brings us to the second piece that I saw in the past week. It was a report out of Forrester called the Facebook Factor. This is a bit of a tangential detour, so bear with me.

The report posits that we can now quantify the value of a Facebook “like.” The reasoning is fairly simple. If you add a few questions to a typical customer survey, you can start to quantify the correlation between someone liking you on Facebook and subsequent purchasing of your product. But, as Forrester points out in the report, there is a correlation/causation trap here that could lead to many marketers making the wrong conclusion.

If you try to equate people who felt motivated to “like” you on Facebook with likelihood to purchase, you run the risk of mistaking correlation for causation. People didn’t buy your product as a result of “liking” you on Facebook.  The Facebook “like” came as a result of a positive “belief” about your brand. It was an effect, not a cause. At best, the Facebook Factor should be considered as nothing more than a leading indicator of brand preference.

But many marketers will confuse cause and effect. They will believe that driving Facebook “likes” will drive higher brand loyalty.  This is where brand and product can potentially become decoupled. Here, once marketers start assigning a value to a Facebook “like” based on Forrester’s methodology, they will start regarding Facebook “likes” as the end goal, trusting in the mistaken belief that a Facebook “like” will always correlate positively to purchase behavior.

Once this decoupling happens, the value of the Facebook “like” starts to erode. The motivation for the “like” often has little to do with a positive brand experience. It’s driven by a promotion or campaign that has just one aim: to drive as many likes as possible. From the customer’s perspective, it’s easy to hit the “like” button. They have no skin in the game. There is no belief behind the action.

In the end, I believe Dyson’s definition of brand is the more authentic one. It goes back to the very roots of branding, which was a reassurance to buyers that they were buying what they believed they were buying.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/174966/brand-beliefs-and-the-facebook-factor.html#ixzz2ik9IjRDB

Believing is Seeing

First published May 10, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In his book “The Believing Brain,” Michael Shermer spends several hundred pages exploring just how powerful beliefs are in forming our view of the world. Beliefs affect not just what we think, but they literally filter what we see and do. And, once in place, beliefs tend to be stubbornly unshakeable. We will go to great extents to defend our beliefs with rationalizations that are often totally or partially fabricated. As Shermer says, “Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.”

In the world of consumerism, this becomes important in any number of ways. For one, we have beliefs about brands, both positive beliefs and negative ones. And, as previous neuro-research has shown, those beliefs can dramatically alter how we sense the world. In a study at Baylor University, Dr. Read Montague found that the reason Coke devotees are so loyal has almost nothing to do with the actual taste, and much more to do with the Coke brand and what it says about them as people. It’s not the taste of Coke we love; it’s the idea of Coke.

A few weeks ago, I saw a press release from another study that takes this concept even further. The implications for understanding consumer decision-making are dramatic. In the study, Ming Hsu from the University of California, Berkeley, conducted an fMRI test of individuals participating in a multi-strategy economic investment game. As they made decisions based on the actions of their opponents, the parts of the brain that were firing were recorded.

Games of this sort require that the participants learn from events and adjust their strategies according. Here’s an excerpt from the media release: “The researchers focused on two types of learning processes. So-called ‘reinforced-based learning’ (RL) operates through trial and error. In contrast, more sophisticated ‘belief-based learning’ requires decision-makers to anticipate and respond to the actions of others. The researchers computed the areas of the brain where activity tracks these two types of learning. In addition, they discovered that the prefrontal cortex is an area that processes learning about others’ beliefs. The same area also predicts an individual’s propensity to engage in either belief learning or simply RL.”

This is interesting. Reinforced learning is completely reactive in nature. It’s learning after the fact. But if that was the only way we learned, we wouldn’t survive long. So the brain needs to adapt a proactive learning framework, and that framework relies on beliefs as its primary construct. We act based on what we believe the best outcome will be, and alter as necessary based on the success or failure of our decisions.

Now, if we were purely rational and empirical in the way we form those beliefs, this would seem to be logical way to live our lives. But, as we’ve seen, our beliefs are often anything but rational. They are usually formed with little thought or input, and once formed, tend to resolutely remain in place, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If you think I’m exaggerating, consider this: 55% of Americans believe in angels, 39% believe in evolution, 36% believe in global warming and 34% believe in ghosts. I’ll leave it you to decide which of those stats you find most troubling.

The other note in the above excerpt that’s interesting is where this belief mechanism sits in the brain: the prefrontal cortex. This, by the way, was the same area of the brain that lit up in Montague’s test when his subjects knew they were drinking Coke. It’s the one part of the brain that really makes us who we are — quite literally, in fact.

Even in something as fleeting and supposedly unemotional as using a search engine, I’ve seen firsthand the powerful impact a strong brand belief can have. It physically alters what we see on the page of results. We’re just getting preliminary results from our own neuro-scanning study, done with Simon Fraser University, and it appears that looking for a favored brand affects how quickly we can find relevant information, how much time we spend looking at it (counterintuitively, we actually spend less time engaging with favored brands) and how easily distracted we are by other information on the page.

Truly, in consumerism, as in all areas of our lives, our beliefs determine how we see and sense the world around us.

 

Reinventing AIDA

First published April 5, 2012 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, my column was about how branding differs between search and more traditional brand channels like TV and print. It came from a recent client conversation I had. Rob Schmults from Intent Media added a well-thought-out, on-the-mark comment that deserves a follow-up. There are three points in particular I want to dive deeper into.

“ I think part of the problem in attempting to do so is that branding is all too often an end in and of itself rather than a means.”

Absolutely. Most sales and marketing happens in dozens of disconnected siloes, with little thought about how the actions of one silo affect all the others. Each silo measures progress by its own metric and set its own agenda. The problem is that all these different initiatives are aimed at the same target, but there is little thought as to how each initiative can impact the prospect.

For the past year, I’ve been thinking about how to approach marketing by starting first with creating a common understanding of the buyer’s motivations and behaviors, and then mapping a decision landscape so we can begin to understand the path the buyer takes through it. Much of my writing over the past two years has explored various aspects of this landscape: things like the role of risk and reward, and how they affect the emotions drive our buying decisions.

If branding becomes disconnected and “an end in and of itself,” it starts to lose touch with the chain of “means” that translates brand awareness into action. I saw a particularly acute example of this in a recent meeting: a brand agency presented research showing each point of movement in its unaided brand awareness metric translated into X of additional revenue. I didn’t dispute the finding, as I believed it to be true. What was missing was the long chain of interdependent “means” taking us from there to here. It was like saying that each inch of rain translated into X increase of revenue at the local farmer’s market. We’re jumping from “A” to “Z” without worrying about the 24 intervening letters.

“SEM is clearly a means — it’s a step to driving a conversion event (typically a sale).”

As I mentioned last week, presence on the search page is very often a critical intermediate step between the lofty heights of brand-building and the nitty-gritty of bringing cash in the door. In fact, if you take the time to understand how search is typically used in the purchase process with your typical buyer, it typically falls into the “no-brainer” category, because the prospect has intent and is completely open to being persuaded. Which brings me to Rob’s next point:

“Branding has value, so the war Gordon describes doesn’t have to end with total victory and branding’s extinction.”

As effective as search is, it’s a channel with built-in limitations, including available inventory. If there is no awareness, there is no inventory. People can’t search for something they don’t know exists (at least, not yet). Branding creates awareness, which, if the dots are connected properly, eventually turns into intent. And when intent is present, search is very effective at converting that intent into action. The chain then is Awareness – Intent – Action, which is a variation on the venerable AIDA branding model: Attention – Interest – Desire – Action. If you combine the two you end up with Awareness – Interest – Desire – Intent – Action, or AIDIA. You need branding at the front end, to create awareness, spark interest and create desire. You need search at the back end to allow prospects to act on their intent and discover how to take action.

It’s interesting to note that the original AIDA model jumped all the way from desire to action without much explanation on how to get there. Given that two of the steps –“interest” and “desire” — seem pretty similar, it’s odd that there is such a huge chasm between the domain of branding and the ultimate transaction itself. The AIDA model was definitely biased towards the front end of the marketing process.

I think what digital has done, especially through search, is to provide much more granularity and clarity on the many steps you can take to get from desire to action. But, as Mr. Schmults reminds us, none of these steps is “an end unto itself.” They’re part of a journey. They depend on each other. And each is passed through by your prospects as they travel down the path of purchase.

To come full circle, that was my original point. I’m not calling for the abolition of branding. I’m just asking that we take the time to understand the journey our customers take, and be there at each step.

 

In Search of Simplicity

First published December 21, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

This quote, from Leonardo da Vinci, was on the original brochure for the Apple II. Throughout his life, Steve Jobs didn’t stray far from this principle. In fact, he was obnoxiously obsessive about it.

When Steve returned to Apple after his 12-year hiatus, he embraced simplicity with a vengeance. While Apple was wondering in the wilderness, they somehow managed to amass no fewer than a dozen different variations of their various computers. All were crappy (and I speak as a former owner of several of them) but at least there were a lot of different varieties of crap to choose from.

One of my favorite passages from Walt Isaacson’s book describes how Jobs quickly pruned the unwieldy product portfolio back down to size: “After a few weeks Jobs finally had enough. ‘Stop!’ he shouted at one big product strategy session. ‘This is crazy.’ He grabbed a magic marker, padded to a whiteboard, and drew a horizontal and vertical line to make a four-squared chart. ‘Here’s what we need,’ he continued. Atop the two columns he wrote ‘Consumer’ and ‘Pro’; he labeled the two rows ‘Desktop’ and ‘Portable.’ Their job, he said, was to make four great products, one for each quadrant.”

The upshot is this. It’s not worth doing something unless you know you can do it really well.  Which brings me to Google.

Google has always embraced the grass roots-definition of innovation. The principle is this: get a bunch of really smart people, let them dream up really smart things, and then figure out a way to monetize it. Google carries it even further. They have recently been on a shopping spree for other companies who are also dreaming up smart things. In theory, it sounds great. There’s only one problem: It lacks simplicity. And, by extension, it lacks focus.

Now, if you refer back to a column I wrote earlier (“Amazon = Evolution, Google = Intelligent Design”) it seems that I’m dancing on both sides of an argument. I don’t see it that way. My point in that column was that you can choose to provide platforms that enable widespread innovation, but it’s difficult to try to own that process entirely within one organization. Platforms enable innovation to play out over a larger stage.

Now, you might say (and I would say the same, being a rabid Darwinist) that nature also lacks simplicity. Evolution certainly didn’t happen through any top-down directive to be number one or number two at anything. Evolution is the biggest ongoing trial and error experiment ever conducted. Google’s approach seems to have much in common with nature in this regard.

But in fact, nature imposes the ultimate simplicity at a later stage, and it does so with relentless cruelty: successful variations survive, and unsuccessful ones die. As mercurial as Jobs was, he doesn’t hold a candle to the whims of ol’ Ma Nature.

In today’s marketplace, there seems to be an urge to try new things just because we can. The barrier to entry is lower than ever, thanks to technology. So we rush opportunity on multiple fronts, hoping one will pay off for us. Companies like Google encourage this by actively enabling their team to dabble in whatever strikes their fancy. I’m not saying this is wrong, but at some point, focus has to be brought into the equation. You need to simplify, prioritize and focus to turn out “insanely great” products. You need not only to be innovative; you also need to be a ruthless pruner of less-than-great ideas. And the culture that fosters collaborative innovation generally has a difficult time arbitrating what survives and what doesn’t. This creates confusion and mixed priorities. It saps away simplicity.

Google’s approach is to extend beta periods indefinitely, hoping that this will weed out the winners from the losers. Eventually, loser products (and there have been many) die under their own inertia. But in the meantime, this extended life-support system drains corporate resources. How many real winners have come out of Google Labs? What is the success rate of Google’s approach to innovation? What would have happened if Google Search weren’t as wildly profitable as it’s been? Would Google still be around?

Steve, I Wish I Knew You

First published October 13, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I wish I had met Steve Jobs.

My heroes from the world of business number exactly two: Walt Disney and Steve Jobs. Walt died when I was 5 years old, so it’s not surprising that our paths never crossed. But theoretically, I could have met Jobs. It was not beyond the realms of possibility. Unfortunately, I never got to meet either of them. And for that, I’m immeasurably saddened.

The thing I admired about both of them goes beyond what I have seen in the recent stream of accolades that has issued forth since last week’s news of Jobs’ passing.

Jobs, and Disney before him, had an amazing ability to know what it was we wanted before we knew it ourselves. It wasn’t business or technical acumen, although both men had it in spades. It was the uncanny ability to ride on the edge of reason and intuition while placing bets on the future, getting it right more often than wrong.

If I knew more about them, I suspect I’d add Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to the list, but the fruit of their labors predates me, so I don’t have the same appreciation for what they did in their lifetimes.

Yes, Jobs (and Disney) shaped huge parts of the world we know today. Yes, our lives have been changed thanks to the mortal time they spent with us. Yes, they had passion. But more than anything, they could reach deep inside themselves, draw a spark of intuition and from it, start a fire in our hearts. That gift comes one in a generation, if we’re lucky. In my lifetime, I’ve only seen it twice.

As smart as Jobs was, he had many contemporary counterparts in the IQ department. Bill Gates and Larry Ellison are no slouches when it comes to mental acuity. More recently, Mark Zuckerberg’s intellect has been lauded on celluloid, no less. And anyone who seems to cross Larry Page’s path is awed by the hammering intensity of his engineering brilliance.

But the genius of Disney and Jobs was of a different sort. It came from being able to take our collective pulse, and somehow knowing what would make it quicken. They could pluck unrealized dreams and transform them into the treasured stuff of our lives.  It was more art than science, more love than logic, more passion than profit. It was, from our awed viewpoint, magic. It seems to me that Bill Gates and Larry Page have little time for magic.

There have certainly been more financially successful companies. Disney was on the edge of the bankruptcy for much of its history. And when Walt did hit a home run, he quickly ploughed his profits back into his next long shot.

Apple wouldn’t be around today if Microsoft hadn’t come to the rescue in 1997 with a $150 million dollar bailout. That amount seems miniscule today next to Apple’s  $370 billion market cap, making it the most valuable tech company in the world (ironically, worth more than half again as much as Microsoft’s $227 billion.)

Jobs and Disney had the ability to create entirely new categories of consumer demand: full-length animated features, theme parks, personal computers, computer animated movies, personal music devices, smartphones and tablet computers. Each of these innovations owed much to the personal vision of the leader.

I’m not sure what Apple’s path will be in the future. I suspect it will bear an eerie similarity to Disney after Walt’s untimely departure in 1966, where management asked the same question about every decision: “What would Walt do?” I have no doubt that the words “What would Steve do?” will be heard often in Cupertino. I’m also sure that it will be some time before we see the likes of another Steve Jobs or Walt Disney.

The gift they had is not often given. I’m just thankful that they both chose to share it.

What’s So Interesting about Google, Anyway

First published July 7, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I just received my review copy of “I’m Feeling Lucky, The Confessions of Google Employee # 59” by Douglas Edwards. That brings to six the number of Google themed books that are sitting on my bookshelf (including one by fellow Insider Aaron Goldman).

That got me to thinking. Are six books a lot to be written about one company?

Well, it turns out that there are more than six. A quick check on Amazon turned up no less than 11 books on Google, the company. That doesn’t include the gazillions of Google-inspired how-to books. So, to return to my original question, are 11 a lot? And if they are, why do authors write about Google? What does Google have that other companies don’t? And how does the Google story stack up against other corporate sagas?

It seems Google actually heads the high-tech pack when it comes to attracting ink. Again checking Amazon, I only found one book on Yahoo and two on Facebook. There were four on Microsoft and seven books on Apple. Of all the tech companies I checked, only IBM equaled Google’s tally, at 11. Of course, IBM has been around for over 100 years, compared to less than two decades for Google.

Google even beats corporate stalwarts like GE (seven), Proctor & Gamble (three) and HP (seven).

In looking at the list, a few things immediately came to mind. First of all, many of the books written about a company are actually written about a founder or chef executive of the company. Half the books written about Microsoft are actually biographies of Bill Gates. The same is true for Apple (Steve Jobs), GE (Jack Welch) and IBM (Lou Gerstner). But none of the Google books I’ve ready are about Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They’re about the company. Certainly, Larry and Sergey have starring roles, but they don’t overshadow the company itself. Google is always front and center.

Secondly, many of the other companies that are the subject of books have gone through massive restructurings or turnarounds, which formed the central theme of the respective books. Google hasn’t hit a slump yet. There isn’t even a lot of conflict in Google’s history to chronicle. Unlike Facebook, Aaron Sorkin (who adapted Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires” for the movie “The Social Network”) would have a difficult time creating a juicy script out of the Google story.  It’s not nearly as “Hollywood” as Facebook’s rise to glory. And Google doesn’t generate near the animosity of a Wal-Mart (20-plus books, most of them about how the retail giant is destroying America) or Enron (the grand Champion of corporate story telling, with over 30 books, all about its ignoble collapse). So, what is it about Google that fascinates us, if it isn’t a rags to riches to rags to riches saga, an inside glimpse at an evil empire, or a superstar CEO?

All the books written about Google are generally complimentary, respectful and, in some cases, even a touch obsequious and over-enthralled. Those who choose to write about Google generally fawn all over the company, the brilliance of the co-founders, the velocity of its growth and the vibrancy of its culture. If there is muck to rake here, potential authors have yet to uncover it. The only other company I’ve found that even comes close to inspiring the sycophantic awe of Google is Disney, with over 20 titles, the majority of them complimentary.

I think the Google story has appeal because Google is something we all use. In many ways, the story of Google is the story of Web search (John Battelle’s approach) — and that has changed our lives in some pretty fundamental ways. It’s Google’s role as a catalyst of change — in how we think about information, in marketing, in how companies conduct themselves, and in a number of yet-to-be determined ways — that compel us to keep turning the pages. This isn’t a story about a company, or a brilliant founder. It’s a story about a society balanced on the cusp of dramatic and massive change.  Google is just the narrative framework many have chosen as the vehicle for their social parable.

Really, if you were going to write a book about search and how it’s changing our world, whom else would you write about?

There is No Blank Slate in Marketing

First published May 26, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In 2002, Steven Pinker wrote a book called “The Blank Slate.” For 509 pages, Pinker argues that when it comes to our brains, and by extension, our minds, there is no such thing as a blank slate. While our destinies are not predetermined by our genes, there are certainly hardwired mechanisms that influence the paths we take.  It’s not solely nature or nurture, but a combination of both. Our minds are neither perfectly malleable plastic (the “blank slate” of behavioralists) nor are they cast in stone. In the end, you cannot deny human nature.

Recently, Google has been spending a lot of time talking about the Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT for short. In effect, they’re saying that when it comes to influencing a buyer, Pinker’s argument is also applicable. In marketing, as in psychology, there is no such thing as a blank Ssate.

Former Procter and Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley started this market-driven quest for truth a few years ago when he introduced the first and second moments of truth. The first (abbreviated as the FMOT) was when the customer is standing in front of the store shelf, trying to decide which package to pick up.  It’s been labeled the most important moment in all of marketing. The second moment of truth is what the customer actually experiences when she uses the product.

But Google, led by ZMOT evangelists including U.S. director of sales Jim Lecinski, is stepping backwards from the FMOT to show that there’s a whole chain of activity that now leads up to the FMOT, which has received the collective Zero Moment of Truth label. It appears that we marketers need a crystallization of the ultimate moment of decision where the balance of a consumer’s mind is tipped in favor of our product.  To use the blank slate metaphor, it’s the moment when the “brand” is seared into our cortical grey matter.

Google is correct in drawing attention to the substantial research that precedes most purchases. The biggest change in the marketplace has been the balancing of Akerlof’s information asymmetry in favor of the buyer. No longer does the seller hold all the cards in the typical transaction. We buyers research because we can. It’s the way we not only mitigate risk but also explore the expected utility of a purchase.  These are fundamental components of decision theory.  The mechanisms that drive decision theory haven’t changed, but the information available to us certainly has.

But even with all this access to information, we still approach buying decisions with our all-too-human biases and foibles. Our online research is filtered through brand beliefs and emotional prejudgments. Even on the search results page, that most brand-agnostic of advertising pallets, brand is a powerful predictor of behavior.  If we launch a search by using a generic product category term, we often have a short list of brands we expect to see bubble to the top of the results page. There is no blank slate here waiting to be impressed upon. There is a sometimes-vague notion of brand preference waiting to be confirmed by Google’s algorithm. And we scan the results page guided by our expectations and preconceptions.

The ZMOT landscape is a difficult thing to map. Google is providing some guidance through the new ebook,, with some practical advice for marketers. This should be a valuable addition to the marketer’s virtual bookshelf. Jim is a smart marketer and Google has privileged access to all of our ZMOT behavior. But, as with everything in marketing, there will be no hard and fast rules. One of the challenges in producing repeatable results in an experimental setting is to control the variables that could impact outcomes. But one of those variables is human nature, and when the experimental setting is marketing, you’re just going to have to accept the fact that there will always be a significant degree of unpredictability.

Baring Your Corporate Soul Online

First published December 2, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Web presence is taking on a whole new meaning. I’m having more and more conversations with companies that are in the middle of redefining who they are online. In that process, they’re just not sure what they expose and what they keep hidden behind the kimono. Their website started as a marketing channel, but the explosion of potential customer touch points online makes the whole idea of a website seem hopelessly antiquated. Yet, there’s a limit in scope and complexity that makes websites an easily grasped online concept.

Here are some selected snippets from those conversations:

1.  “Is blogging really worthwhile? It’s a pretty high investment for the low traffic that blogs get.”

2.  “Yeah, we don’t really talk about that on our website. Would anyone be interested in that?”

3.  We launched our Facebook page and we have 170,000 fans already. Other than a potential audience to advertise too, we’re just not sure what that means.”

Here, then, is the business reality that lives on the other side of all these comments:

1.  The company in question is literally creating a paradigm shift by introducing new workflow management platforms in a very traditional industry. They succeed by convincing companies that technology can dramatically improve performance and profitability. Yet, despite the urging of their digital marketing department, they’re reluctant to embrace digital content generation channels (such as blogs) to spread this message.

2.  This company is a North American toy manufacturer that is evangelical in their mission to empower creative development in children. They employ one of the largest internal design teams in the industry outside of electronic gaming. And, the design team sits directly above the manufacturing floor (they’ve resisted the industry tide to move all their manufacturing offshore by dramatically improving efficiencies through technology) so they can follow their designs from inception right through to realization.

3.  A clothing retailer based in Montreal is going head-to-head with much larger American competitors and stealing significant market share in key entry markets because of the coolness of being “French.”The strength of the Quebecois culture shines through in the retailer’s promotional materials despite the fact that there has been no overt intent on the part of the retailer to capitalize on it.

Three different stories, but they all have one thing in common. As they consider their next steps in creating an online presence, they’ll all drawing closer and closer to the very essence of their companies. In the past decade and a half, we all rushed to create a website because it seemed to be the price of entry to play in the online marketplace. But since then, that online ecosystem has exploded along multiple dimensions. It’s much richer than it used to be.

At one time, a website was the only conceivable way to play, and those websites were all considered sales or marketing channels. But today, our customers expect to engage with us in an authentic and compelling way online. There is a reason why they’re intrigued by our products or services. And often, the answer to why that is can be found in the core of who we are. It lives in our mission, our core values and our people. Yet we almost never expose that online. What makes us different is infused into our corporate culture and may be taken from granted by those of us who live and work on the inside. We never think about exposing that side of us online. Yet it’s exactly those inside stories that set us apart. And yes, people are interested in that stuff. People care about how fanatical Zappos is about customer service. People respond to the obsessive worship of design that typifies Apple. And not all the drinkers of the Google Kool-Aid live and work within the Google Empire.

A while ago in my company we made a decision. We are a service company —  our product is our people. So we pushed them front and center on our website. We wanted prospects to learn a little bit about the team they’d be working with. Also, within our company, music was a big part of our culture. We had a number of employees who were also musicians. As almost an afterthought, we asked all our employees to submit their top-10 music lists and published them on our site. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve met someone for the first time and they’ve told me that they also love the Eagle’s “Hotel California,” or that “Bohemian Rhapsody” still sets their head bobbing a la Wayne’s World. Our top-10 lists are consistently one of the most popular sections of our site.

It may not be part of the marketing plan, but don’t be afraid to bare a bit of your soul through online channels. It makes us human, and being human is a great foundation on which to build a relationship!

Ode to an iPad

First published October 21, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I really had no idea how much I’d love my iPad. I have to say that it’s now my preferred connection to the online world. Somehow, whether by design or coincidence, Apple has tapped into something primal and intuitive in myself. Judging from other iPad owners I’ve talked to, I suspect I’m not alone. There is a magical thing happening between me and this sleek little device. And whatever it is, it’s important, even prescient. This, I suspect, is our future sitting in our laps.

What’s the Big Deal?

I’ve spent a good part of my life pondering various technology interfaces. Based on this, I really didn’t think the iPad was that big a deal. The reason I got one was because I needed an ebook reader and I felt that the iPad offered me more functionality than a Kindle. But other than the inevitable coolness (or, at least, perceived coolness) that comes with any Apple device, I didn’t see what all the buzz was about. After all, it was just a big iPhone… without the phone. I still had to deal with an all-too-touchy digital keyboard and a rather anemic processor.

But then I got my hands on one. And something rather strange happened. I suspect that Apple may have found the perfect form factor. When you combine the larger screen with multitouch technology, it completely changes how I interacted with my device. It wasn’t something I could have predicted. But everything I did on the iPad just seemed more natural, more enjoyable, more — dare I say it — sensual. This was one sexy little piece of technology.

Love of the Limbic Kind

What happened? There is no new technology here. We’re even using an obsolete OS, for heaven’s sake. There may be no rational reasoning — but I’ll tell you, my irrational mind has fallen in love. Then again, perhaps it has nothing to do with ration. Maybe Apple is just making interactions with technology more primitive, in a good way.

Keyboards are stupid in pretty much every way imaginable. I’ve dedicated several hours of my life to understanding the QWERTY layout so I’m a reasonably proficient touch typist, but the layout still makes no sense — and yes, I’m aware of the history of it vs. the Dvorak keyboard.. The mouse was a step in the right direction, but there was still some rewiring of our brains required to understand that the cursor was really our proxy for our hand movements.  I find track pads a rather poor compromise.

But, to be able to grab something right in front of our eyes and manipulate it, ah — that is touching something hardwired deep in our limbic brain.  To flick, to stroke, to pinch — that is what it means to be human. Up ’til now, our user experiences have had to be jammed in the arbitrary constraints of outdated and illogical interfaces. But the iPad, perhaps more than any other device before it, is letting us be human again. And the experience is intoxicating.

The Human Part of HCI

I felt something of the same rush when I first picked up the iPhone, but the extra real estate of the iPad delivers a compounding effect on the level of the user experience. Perhaps you think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, but I suspect that the very humanness of the iPad’s interface could be a game-changer. I’m not the first to say so. This was much of the buzz I discounted when the iPad first came out. But now I’ve had the chance to see what might be behind the game-changing aspects of this device. And ironically, it’s nothing to do with new technology. In fact, it’s wrapping existing technology in a package that nailed the “human” part of the human-computer-interaction equation.

The question that comes to mind is, how might this change the nature of our online experiences? If our entire online history has been built on the paradigm of a keyboard/mouse/monitor interaction, how might that change with a multitouch, interactive screen? And that’s not even including geographically savvy devices, cameras or voice commands. That’s a substantially different paradigm, which will inevitably lead to a substantially different experience. Imagine, interacting with a virtual world where you can picture your surroundings, know where you are, touch the things you’re interacting with and express your intent verbally.  Finally, technology will start to catch up with what it means to be a human.

The Apple Approach to Digital Service Delivery

First published October 7, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

A few weeks ago, I was at a conference where the future of advertising was being debated. One of the topics that came up naturally was the future of advertising agencies. What will they look like in the future? It’s a stone-cold cinch that they won’t look much like they do today.

Here’s the challenge. Marketing is changing faster than most companies can keep up with. So many marketers find themselves chasing technology. This is an approach guaranteed to frustrate. Technology is impossible to predict. It’s an area rife with “Black Swans.” You can’t pin future strategies on technological bubbles that expand and burst. As one marketing head said, “the minute someone comes to me with a Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare strategy, I fire them.”

How to Build a Racecar

What marketers are trying to do to keep up with the digital transition wave is akin to buying miscellaneous mechanical parts and then trying to assemble them into a racecar on the fly. In most cases, you don’t know what those pieces do, how they fit together, or even if they do fit together. We’re not even sure what the end product should look like. Yet we keep having digital marketing technology vendors say we have to buy these parts because if we don’t, we’ll lose the race. It’s madness to continue this way. It’s one of the reasons my friend Scott Brinker of Ion Interactive says that we need CMTs – Chief Marketing Technologists. The theory – at least one person in the pit crew should have an idea of what a car looks like.

As I was thinking about this, I started thinking what a possible parallel might be. Where else does technology move so fast that’s it’s hard, if not impossible, for the end user to keep up? Almost immediately, I thought about personal computers.

The PC Service Model

Consider the PC approach. You buy a box designed to accommodate as many pieces of hardware and software as possible. In return for this open flexibility, you have to figure out how to get all the pieces to fit together. You have to download the patches, try to get the box to recognize the new peripheral and figure out how to get one program to talk to the other. Granted, it’s easier than digital marketing because at least the various developers of hardware and software go in with the intention of trying to get along nice with each other. There is no such consensus with digital marketing vendors.

The Apple Service Model

Now consider the Apple approach. Within an enclosed ecosystem, the pieces are pretested to ensure they fit together. The goal: to deliver a plug-and-play experience. Apple is not 100% successful in this, but its track record is much better than on the PC side. Do you have the open flexibility of the PC world? No, but you’re also spared seeing how the sausage is made.

Could you not extend this same approach to a digital marketing agency? Rather than embroiling the client in the nitty-gritty detail of multiple platforms and technologies, couldn’t you integrate the pieces so they work well in the background, pumping out results through a simple and elegant user interface?

It sounds simple, and indeed, this is what many full-service digital agencies say they do, yet there still seems to be a disconnect when it comes to satisfied customers. I haven’t heard many enthusiastic evangelists for digital agencies. I haven’t seen the same devotion and/or longing I see in other’s eyes when I pull out my iPad in a meeting or on the plane. It was expressed in clear terms on a flight last week when, as I was reading a book on it, an elderly gentleman walked down the aisle and asked, “Do you love it or do you LOVE it?” We talked for 10 minutes about iPads. Until those same conversations start happening about your favorite digital agency, we’re missing the boat.