By Robert Wheatley

Generational shift ushers in new era

With uncertain market conditions, upheaval in traditional communications channels and consumer behavior in a constant state of flux, it simply doesn’t pay to assume what you did this year and the “rules” that governed your strategic thinking, should remain unchanged in the year ahead.

Continued expansion of niche markets and the evolution of sub-segments of consumer “tribes” will remain as a constant. The product development world still favors mass customization and segmentation in nearly every category. Consumers also show an unrelenting desire to congregate socially in communities of shared interest.

That said there are over-arching trends that should be considered as we look towards communicating effectively in 2009. Roy Williams had an insightful post in November at his Monday Morning Memo blog that built off a book titled Generations, published in 2003. The book chronicles a curious behavior in Western society the authors assert is as predictable as the sunrise and set: a generational pendulum swing that moves back and forth between an Idealist mindset and a Civic perspective.

Baby boomers (I am one of them) may have been one of the most obvious examples of this collective attitude shift when, in 1963 a new era of Idealism was introduced. Says Williams – “By the end of 2008 there won’t be a Baby Boomer left in America. The last reluctant holdout will finally admit that Woodstock is over, Kennedy is dead and the Idealism of the 60’s was a wistful dream.” Williams makes the case the final move to the other side of the pendulum swing, — to a Civic point of view — will be complete at the end of this year.

This new global mindset should be factored into communications and selling strategy in the year ahead. Here in summary are several of Williams’ recommendations:

Efficiency is the new service

With busy lifestyles getting busier and communications technology allowing for instant access to information on what products to buy and where, consumers will be looking for a combination of quality, price and quickness. In this scenario, efficiency in customer interaction wins out over high touch, relationship selling.

Authenticity reigns supreme

Today’s consumer comes equipped with the most highly refined bullshit detector ever devised. It is sensitive, accurate and always on. So in today’s era of “conversational” marketing and consumer control if you don’t or won’t admit a mistake or misstep, they may not believe the other things you have to say. Keep it real!!

Horizontal connectedness

Gone now are the days of defined and categorized vertical social worlds. Labels like white collar, blue collar are not salient. The new American dream isn’t about pulling ahead of others, it’s about being a productive team member. Winning is less important than belonging.

The new mass media is… word of mouth

Technology is empowering. It is also unforgiving in its ability to facilitate radical change. Now we have instant access to everything. Viral marketing was not created by an agency. It is an outgrowth of a horizontally connected world where people share their discoveries, and work to help each other avoid mistakes.

Stop boasting

Talk is cheap. And as we’ve said repeatedly in this blog, actions speak louder than words. Telling people what you believe is not the same as showing them. What are the “proofs of claim” in your communications? How can consumers experience these things for themselves? Messaging about how great you are is less compelling.

So here’s the call to action for 2009: what higher strategic purpose can your brand align itself with that transcends the obvious “I’m trying to make a sale here” interaction with consumers? How can you be more genuine, authentic, credible with consumers who expect brands they prefer to be a reflection of their own needs and passions?

Says Williams – “In the words of Bill Bernbach, I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.”

“>Hard Wired Humans Look For Authenticity

Cleaning out some files I ran across an article from FastCompany that I blogged about in May. Really resonated then to Bill Breen’s take on brand strategy. Just leafing through the piece again I stopped on this point: “overloaded by sales pitches, consumers are gravitating towards brands they sense are true and genuine…(the) hunger for authentic is all around us.”

But what sets the stage for authenticity?

This is a frequent subject in our blog because it is so fundamental to successful brand and communications strategy. Breen goes on to state, ”authenticity comes to a brand that IS what it SAYS it is (read: not a poser).” Jim Hardison, Creative Director of Portland based brand consultancy Character explains authenticity this way: “The story that a brand tells through its actions (must) align with the story it tells through its communications.”

I honestly cannot think of a more powerful expression of the essence of the PR mindset and approach to brand strategy and communication than the previous statement. And why does this matter?

Hard Wired Humans…

This concept of brand behavior syncing with communication is fundamentally respectful of how people see and resonate to the world around them. Sure there will be aberrations to the norms. However for the most part we are hard wired in our response to the actions and behaviors of people, brands, businesses and everyday life:

We believe in fairness

Desire honesty over spin

Prefer truth instead of lies

Respect innovation

Root for the underdog

Embrace love

Admire self-less behavior

Abhor cheaters

Believe the best should prevail

Are You Aligned?

Respect and love of the consumer begins with an unrelenting commitment to the highest levels of integrity in how a brand presents itself. Consumers are more aware than ever of the facts around them and highly observant of behaviors in the context of what a brand may claim about itself or its product/service.

Inconsistency in this arena is a dangerous game. Half measures, window dressing, fakery and marketing make-up applied over a less than authentic proposition goes against the grain of the consumer’s own internal Integrity Meter.

The Authenticity Reality Check:

If your customer service stinks the inconsistency will come back to haunt the moment a reasonable branded alternative arrives. Cable guy anyone?

Are formulas and ingredients matching the proposition?

If you executed short cuts to meet a cost number but left the basic positioning for your product claims at a loftier level, are you courting disaster? Think they won’t notice? Think again.

Overstating the benefits?

There is a great temptation in communications to stretch the language (hyperbole) in an effort to maximize the appeal. This can be tricky — go too far and consumers will see through the hype.

Do you love your employees as much as you “love” the consumer?

Fairness, honesty, truth, care – are these characteristics of corporate behavior in dealing with employees also aligned with the efforts made to court the affections of buyers?

When behavior and communication match the stage is set for authenticity – which, by the way, is now table stakes for successful brands in the age of transparency and consumer control.

The Basic Tenets of PR-Think Relevant Now More Than Ever

Think of these words for a minute: true, open, genuine, authentic, honest, reciprocal - these terms comprise the lexicon of today’s effective brand communications model. In their insightful column, “The New Quid Pro Quo” published in ADWEEK, guest writers Ben Richards and Faris Yakob of the Naked Communications agency recite the demise of the old “ambush” style of intrusive communication. In its place they state, “(the) consumer demands something of value in return for consuming a brand’s communications.” Making marketing valuable to consumers, they say, is the essence of the new Marketing 2.0 model.

Value in this context might be best defined as the coalescing of brand strategy and relevance to the consumer’s lifestyle interests and passions. For the most part these discussions around the tenets and principles of Marketing 2.0 are, in reality, a conversation about the fundamental underpinnings of PR strategy. Skeptical? We’ll allow that for much too long the marketing world has focused entirely on PR tools and tactics - news stories, events and such - or worse - on Hollywood’s silly dramatization of the perky party planner — which has absolutely nothing to do with this discipline. If we go to the root of what public relations is, there are some interesting corollaries with concepts that form the basis of effective brand communication today.

Public Relations, the communications field, has always been about truthful and authentic forms of outreach (not spin - which is a corruption of this precept). PR is aimed at creating the foundations of trust between stakeholder audiences and a business. It is driven through active demonstration and proof of worth, genuine interest and investment in customers and other constituents. It is also about building reputations by taking credible action. Further, promoting and creating the basis for conversation and two-way interaction with audiences has long been at the core of PR strategy. The PR trained brain sees the marketing communications landscape through this lens. And indeed, these things now comprise the fundamentals of constructing successful brand relationships.

It is our intuitive grasp and visceral understanding of this more human, honest and interactive form of relationship communication that makes us ideal front-line players in the launch of new businesses, products and brands. Even the principle channel of communications outreach, through “earned” editorial media, demands a presentation of authentic, honest evidence concerning what makes a product or brand unique and why a story idea offers value to a media outlet’s audience. It is a sense of reciprocity and unselfishness that stands on the floor of PR-driven communications that meets the consumer’s desire for engagement on their own terms. Editorial media presents the case for product trial in a vehicle consumer’s will accept as believable. Brand sponsored experiences and events create the bridge between brand and consumer interests. Dialogue, feedback and conversation are woven naturally into the fabric of the PR based model.

It stands to reason then that as the capability of professionals in the PR business - with respect to understanding brand and business strategy - rises, this arm of the marketing communications arsenal should become the tip of the spear in brand romance building. This is no longer about press releases and media tours (tactics) - rather it is now about our ability to cast brand communications in honest and authentic forms of outreach (strategy) that the consumer will “opt-in” to receive.

How to determine if an idea is persuasive…

In a recent Ad Age article entitled Miller Repeals Man-Law, we learn that Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s novel Lite beer brand campaign is getting shelved because sales are slipping. Perhaps there are other reasons why sales are off besides the ad effort, but there is an interesting condition here that raises its head routinely in the marketing communications world:

Evidence abounds that occasionally an idea or campaign that is easily recognized as creative or intrusive by virtue of its cleverness or interesting twist on conventions and culture — in the final analysis, fails to move the marketing needle. What’s going on here? You look at an idea and exclaim proudly - “smells creative to me.” You feel bullish about the idea because it plows new ground, rocks your sensibilities around distinguishing your brand. Perhaps it aligns with pop culture trends and you think it’s cool until you analyze outcomes and it appears the creative dog wouldn’t hunt on the sales trail. No one took the bait. This condition, by the way, applies to PR as much as it does advertising and promotion. Perplexing and vexing isn’t it?

Clever PR stunts can draw editorial media attention and gain coverage, but when the smoke clears the consumer fails to do what they’re supposed to and respond properly - as in buy the product. Perhaps it’s the product’s fault? Well maybe. But let’s not just latch ourselves to the denial wagon when this occurs - perhaps the idea that was, by definition, creative and clever was really the wrong idea. Was the coverage about the product - or more about the stunt?

When is awareness and buzz just an end in itself?

When the preponderance of editorial media activity is more about the agency and the campaign than it is about the product, there’s a watch-out. Real and authentic relevance to the passions and lifestyle concerns of the target is especially important when attempting to vet ideas about their persuasive powers. Here’s an interesting example from the beer business:

We handled PR for Molson USA on the Molson beer portfolio. An epiphany occurred for this wonderful client during a series of meetings with a few prominent distributors. Molson’s ad campaign was clever, edgy, pop-culture bending and unique. An example: fake magazine covers adorned the back side of popular men’s magazines that could be placed on a guys coffee table as part of making him seem more alluring to a potential dating prospect - see below:

TrustFund (just one of a series) was supposed to signal to women - hey, this guy is rich! It was fun, engaging, creative, different and humorous. The premise: Molson beer helps you get dates. But…
Distributors frequently employ young men who get into bar and nightclub accounts to help execute promotions, maintain good relations with account owners and talk up the brand. They are in many respects the bulls-eye target audience for these campaigns. Brand execs at Molson asked these guys what they thought of the edgy ads. Remarkably, what they heard was surprising: “Yeah, it’s edgy alright, and we got the joke too. Very creative. But if you’re asking me as a consumer if it helps make me want to buy your beer, the answer is no. You guys need to help me respect your beer.”

Oh my. Everyone thought this audience was focused exclusively on the social hustle with the ladies. Well surprise, there was another point of view: I actually care about what I drink. Authentic forms of communication that are relevant to the concerns and passions of the target - you can get this right or you can get this wrong.

Tangential conversations

When communications is not about the product at all but about a lifestyle idea that runs alongside the product, there’s always a chance the conversation will simply miss the mark. If the premise is there’s nothing really strong and alluring to talk about related to the product, then there’s a larger problem no ad or PR campaign will fix.

Direct conversations

Consider Apple Computer’s recent ad campaign - just genius. It’s about the product, but done in a clever and engaging way. It is powerful, but never boring. It is revealing and entertaining, but also relevant. It exploits weaknesses in the competing technology without sounding self-congratulatory. It humanizes the brand, and creates engaging metaphors that play to the image differences between PCs and Macs. It burnishes the latent rumor mill that Macs have always enjoyed as easy and fun to use. This is great stuff. Effective too.

Great story telling must begin with an over-arching strategic platform that helps guide the creative process away from ideas that fill the “clever” glass to the brim but don’t overflow with positive business results. The consumer is smarter, better informed than we often give them credit for, and can smell an idea vacant of any real substance from a mile away. To reach someone in the heart as well as head, messaging must be about things that matter, that make a difference to the consumer’s life. These strategic threads can be discovered - it just takes some digging. Along with discipline that at the end of the day, this is about achieving business results - all other imperatives are secondary. In the PR business we believe above all else, the end game isn’t just securing a story in the Wall Street Journal or a segment on the Today Show, it’s about the substance of what’s conveyed.

In a recent Business Week article, media columnist Jon Fine discusses “pollution in the blogosphere” via the emergence of pay-to-play posting services that attempt to leverage the earnestness and presumed honesty of social journalism for paid (but not acknowledged as such), favorable product coverage. Is this good old-fashioned entrepreneurialism at work, or yet another maneuver on the communications chessboard to manipulate the consumer? Whatever it is, we predict it won’t work as advertised for long. Why? Because the new media posse won’t let this one go unnoticed. And because - give ‘em credit - consumers will sooner or later divine the artifice and walk quickly in the opposite direction. This ultimately is a good thing. It may take time, but real innovation, real value, real benefits, truthful communication, and substantitive evaluation on the merits of what’s being offered by brands and businesses is going to win over anything less than that.

Gawd I love era we live in. As PR professionals we’ve been raised in a discipline where, despite Hollywood’s cliched presentation to the contrary, the principles we adhere to are (supposed to be) about truth and transparency. So, there is a natural predisposition to look at marketing and brands in this way too. We much prefer to cast product and brand messaging in terms of authentic, meaningful, verifiable, demonstrable benefits that will stand the test of editorial scrutiny - be it mainstream or populist. There’s a great new marketing cocktail recipe that’s gaining traction: Add one part of the new social journalism juggernaut and two parts of the marginalizing effect the Internet has had on any strategy based around a lame “me-too” offering - or worse, an outright lie or half-truth - shake vigorously and pour. Out comes a brave new world that has inadvertently spawned a new marketing paradigm we’re calling the Age of Authenticity. As in separating wheat from chaff, the increasingly sophisticated and well-armed, ultra-informed consumer looks for the truly remarkable - the authentically better idea - and embraces it –while treating everything else as a commodity.

Authentic, meaningful, true propositions

Sure you can attempt hyperbole and bombast, maybe work to stretch the truth a bit about a product or brand, but the world is an increasingly cynical place where organizations exist more so in a fish bowl than ivory tower. Naked if you will. Consumers should now be recognized as card carrying, licensed, experienced, savvy, journeyman-professional shoppers. The consumer is in a sense inoculated, maybe immune, and just a smidge skeptical — hence the seismic rise of word-of-mouth credibility, or should we say reliance, on the advice of trusted allies and friends. A recent GfK Roper Consulting poll of consumers worldwide found that 70 percent find family, friends and others in their orbit of personal contacts as trustworthy sources of information on which products to buy. Focusing on the US market, 81 percent of respondents trust family first, followed by editorial media at 56 percent, advertising at 55 percent and on-line sources at 24 percent.

The call to action: work diligently to create remarkable products and experiences for consumers - ideas that are strong enough to attract and hold the attention of an engaged user. Communications in this scenario serve as a spotlight, shining and focusing attention on something that deserves the recognition. Word of mouth occurs because the idea seeds through these channels and is recognized immediately as remarkable and relevant to the lives of its intended user. The goal for marketers: the unending pursuit of authentic meaning, value and superiority.

I had a V-8 moment today… Our office building sits near the corner of Chicago and Michigan Avenues, one of the busiest intersections in the retail paradise known as the Magnificent Mile. In the summer, the area teems with visitors looking to shop and enjoy the bustle and energy of downtown Chicago. It’s noisy, busy - a woman trying to get the attention and wrist of her young child yells over the din and distraction to no avail - little Jimmy just stares upward, gawking at the tall buildings. Many of us in marketing may be little Jimmy’s of sorts. A major market sea change yelling to get our attention nearby and we just don’t hear it.

In his seminal treatise about the shift in the “hegemony of the three television networks…to the more than one billion people (who are) Internet users, their lives changed forever by the sheer scope, scale and power of an IP-connected universe,” contributing columnist to AdWeek, Bob Greenburg (a remarkable intellect, visionary and insightful writer), tackles the old “TV industrial complex” syndrome found in so many marketing plans. He dissects and dismantles the myths about effective outreach to consumers who are increasingly hard to get to through conventional media platforms like 30-second spots. But, wait a minute. Is there a proverbial cart that comes before any discussion about which media horse to ride?

Yes. It’s the product.

In an article in American Executive magazine, Bob Worell, president of Worrell Design in Minneapolis talks about the seepage, the leakiness of brand franchises due to their average-ness saying, “Consumers are catching on that companies are putting attractive spins on mediocre products. And when they can buy a product that is manufactured overseas of equal or higher value for a fraction of the price, why should they pay more for the name.” Similarly, John Moore, owner of the Brand Autopsy blog and former marketing guru for Starbucks, waxes on about the passion and devotion Starbucks had in the early years about their mission to bring the world a better cup of coffee. His organization’s focus wasn’t on media platforms, brand equity strategies and TV commercials; it was singularly about the product and how to make it better. The experience was king, not the communications plan.

So many of us little Jimmy’s stand transfixed on the revolution occuring around us as word of mouth marketing gets more pundit time than ever, and old media buying philosophies are harpooned daily. Hand wringing right and left about how to reach consumers and, we think, convince them via creative alchemy about why they should prefer our client’s brand over another. What’s that sound from the wings? It’s a fundamental and elemental idea: fix the product. If it (the product) isn’t remarkable, authentically superior, demonstrably better and engaging, then all of the Merlin media magic isn’t going to help you in the end. The best story telling falls about of products that are compelling all on their own. No need for massive amounts of marketing make-up to dress-up something that doesn’t radiate charm. Think long and hard about what’s headed for the shelf and how it can be made more naturally alluring. On that foundation communications has a reasonable chance of helping close the loop and offer illumination around a brand that truly deserves the spotlight.