There’s been a fair amount of marketing media buzz of late about the recent promotion from Kellogg called Share Your Breakfast. It asks consumers to share a photo of their breakfast – and with each post a donation is triggered towards a morning meal for children who have trouble getting the right nutritional start on their day. Just brilliant. By all accounts to date it’s successful, too.
Sure it’s relevant to moms and their concerns plus the message is simple, therefore sticky and compelling. But what’s really going on here? Below is a statement we’ve included in a few client and new business presentations that sums it up:
“Science now proves what brand strategists have always sensed. We human beings have a need to believe in and act upon something that’s greater than ourselves… Let’s realize the significance of this discovery and impress upon ourselves that a brand is a belief system. Want greater rewards? Then impart your brand with greater meaning…”
One of the poster child examples of this might be TOMS Shoes, a business designed from the ground up to embody this idea. In their unique case, the company gives away a pair of shoes to needy children in foreign countries for every pair they sell. One-to-one is how it’s described. And the company recently announced plans to take this concept to the next level – which we’ll assume for now will be some expanded foray into new product categories with the same premise its core.
Have You Found Your Higher Purpose?
The concept of finding a brand’s higher purpose isn’t just an articulation of cause marketing strategies. It could be some other element of passion within a target consumer’s lifestyle that your brand can help enable.
Our point about this concept of higher purpose though, is not so much recommending an “add on” project to the annual marketing plan. We see it as fundamental to relationship creation between brand and user. If you are willing to consider it that way, then higher purpose is part of the fabric of successful brand building in the age of consumer control.
A Key to Powerful PR…
Moreover this kind of thinking delivers the grist for powerful public relations and social media programs. It can take a campaign to another level once you’ve discovered through insight research what your consumer’s truly care about. Imagine if you will the compelling voice a brand can secure as advisor and partner in helping consumers do what they love to do. Everyone has a passion for something. It’s in how you position the brand as a “friend” to be helpful and supportive that the magic can happen. That’s often in the form of transformational ideas that imbue your brand with greater meaning and in doing so greater value.
To be sure that value can be found in the dynamically different and laudable efforts of companies like TOMS Shoes — where helping others is baked into the business model. I for one look at that with deep respect and admiration. It’s unselfishness at its apex, and as it turns out a great business too.
One of the greatest marketing evolutions in the Internet era: brands have acquired the ability to be content creators – publishers, producers of their own media. This fits perfectly with the other great strategic upheaval — brands can no longer simply imprint messages and attempt to exert “control” over consumer behavior by pushing messages at consumers.
As I write this, many brands still believe this will work.
The brand/consumer relationship is tougher to build now and demands a more selfless form of engagement. It requires singular devotion to understanding and mining relevance to the consumer’s lifestyle interests and passions. Brands-that-matter to their users can earn permission for a relationship by connecting tangibly, emotionally to activities and interests their consumer already cares about.
So doesn’t it stand to reason that working hard to become a source of valuable, interesting, engaging, entertaining information about these lifestyle passions could be important? For a fashion or jewelry brand it’s the opportunity to tap into that creative self-expression that is at the core of what drives a fashion-focused person. For the food brand it might be enabling the culinary creativity, learning and emotional payoff going on everyday in the kitchen (experimenting with new dishes, tastes and techniques).
In virtually every category insight research can help you unearth this unique emotional grist that drives the most devoted fans and followers. And from there is an enormously powerful opportunity to cement that relationship by casting the brand as an enabler and provider of stories and content that offers intrinsic value – How? Information, ideas and experiences that help the consumer enjoy, do what they do better and connect with others that share their interests.
Trust is the key to engagement…
But the word trust looms large in this. How does a brand successfully establish itself as a trusted and valued source? Here are five ways a brand can develop a respected and reliable channel of rich-content media:
1. The value of respected outside voices
In the news business, outside quote-able sources are employed to validate assertions made in a news story. Similarly, outside experts, influencers and knowledge-brokers can bring their own credibility and cachet to the story telling in brand-owned media. Bring in the experts as contributors and steer clear of putting them in a compromised position of endorsing or directly selling your product.
2. The type, tone and tenor of the content matters
Watch the overt selling. Your media mission is to be helpful, useful. Think like a magazine editor or TV producer working to build exciting, interesting stories that add value to the reader’s lifestyle. Operate like a traditional media organization focused on reader and viewer benefit. Take a reportorial approach to the content. If the communication comes off like reporting and informing rather than persuading, you’ll earn the attention of your best followers.
3. Identify the storytellers
Create an editorial board of editors and contributors. If you identify and position the writers and producers, you humanize the entire interaction for your audience. You also create an environment for trust to take root because the contributors are identified and thus “real people” are engaged in the communication.
Create an editorial board of editors and contributors. If you identify and position the writers and producers, you humanize the entire interaction for your audience. You also create an environment for trust to take root because the contributors are identified and thus “real people” are engaged in the communication.
4. Transparency
How do real friends speak with each other? Honest, straightforward, real, open communication is fundamental between true friends. Treat your audience with the same respect. When issues and complaints arise, don’t hide or spin. Be matter-of-fact. Admit mistakes – probably the hardest thing to do, but also the most refreshing and endearing behavior you can show. Nobody’s perfect. No one expects your organization or brand to be perfect.
5. Be entertaining
You can’t bore your customer’s into loving you and coming back for more. Valuable, useful information is a prerequisite. How that information is served up can vary from tedious to fun and interesting. Make them laugh and make them cry. Video may be the most powerful medium available and offers the magic of words, picture, sound, music, personalities and color. It’s a bite-size world we live in now so keep it short. But most of all keep it entertaining. Mainstream media is working overtime to achieve this and so should you.
What’s the end game? Once a respected source, you have an open channel of communication that’s direct. And with content that’s got their attention – a long way from the good old days of beating people over the head with repetition and self-serving messages you hope and pray will break through the noise. Ten years ago brands could only dream of creating such a relationship. Now it’s possible.
You know what’s great about powerful ideas? You can recognize the strengths almost instantly. And yesterday that happened at ragan.com’s review of Whirlpool’s web content strategy. So today we’re applauding and recognizing some terrific work in PR and brand building. As we’ve said before here at the Brand Trailblazer blog, if you look at your best consumers as walking wallets and view the relationship with them as transactional, you are risking failure in your ability to engage and communicate effectively.
On the other hand, treating consumer relationships the same way we regard our closest friends and family (we truly care about them) opens the door to an entirely new spectrum of programs and strategies — aimed at building relevance for your brand in the lives of those you hope to sell to. We call this finding and mining your brand’s “Higher Purpose”.
Whirlpool offers us a terrific example of this kind of thinking, well executed, that demonstrates a profound understanding of how brand relationships are built in the era of consumer control. Whirlpool has created the Institute for Fabric Science and Institute for Kitchen Science as platforms intended to help, advise and engage consumers on problems and needs they may have in their daily lives around cooking, cleaning (appliances) and laundry.
This works to establish Whirlpool as an expert knowledge broker and advisor on issues the consumer faces. Further real people are involved in the content creation and delivery, which helps humanize the brand. It takes about a second to see the vast array of potential extensions these platforms offer for earned media activity and additional multi-media content creation, so vital to aggregating and activating an audience at Facebook.
Monica Teague, Whirlpool’s Senior Manager for PR and Brand Experience had this to say in her Ragan.com interview: “And that’s the whole point of the Institute of Fabric Science and its sister, the Institute of Kitchen Science. Acting as a resource—versus promoting products—goes a long way in developing brand loyalty.” Amen to that. And we would go a step further to point out that now brands are obligated to earn permission for a relationship with consumers based on their ability to authentically connect with lifestyle needs and aspirations. It’s this kind of thinking that helps forge real bonds with people over time.
In the absence of strategies like the Whirpool effort, brands risk disengagement and commoditization – where finding a lower price becomes the only emotional value consumers experience with your business.
From editorial shotgun to building influence and engagement
By Robert Wheatley
There may have been a time when massive distributions of press releases or video and audio news releases would have been the principal component in mainstream consumer media PR plans. Those days are gone.
Have you fully made the strategic and tactical shift to focus on a different view of engagement and communications? Do conversations and relationships sit at the forefront of your campaigns, more so than looking for gross impressions and measurement yardsticks based purely on audience number delivery?
Is Internet based communication, outreach and community building getting the budget priority or is mainstream media still grabbing the spending spotlight?
At a recent meeting of the Association of National Advertisers, Coca-Cola CMO Joe Tripodi was quoted in coverage of the event saying that conversations are now more important than impressions. To be sure effective message delivery has always been a vital consideration – nonetheless mass or “tonnage” of placements was also a major part of the editorial results story.
Think Different…
• We are now participating in the era of relationship-based marketing.
• Where influence is earned based on the brand’s ability to mine relevance with the target consumer’s lifestyle.
• And true communication is a not only an outcome of optimizing the intersection of earned media and owned content, but also developing and investing in conversational tools. The crux of this effort is more peer-to-peer than loading the communications shotgun for another outward facing message blast.
Quality of contact is important and quality builds from a base of reciprocity. How do you know if your thinking is right on this score? Ask yourself this question: am I actively looking for ways that my brand can act and operate to improve my best customer’s lifestyle and enable/facilitate their personal interests?
Pay-to-Play
Even mainstream media channels are in a state of transition as audience stats once employed to lure in advertisers gets thinned by the splintering of consumer attention — mostly to places where opt-in engagement work well because the content to consume is not about overt selling. That said, increasingly the lines between editorial (church) and paid (state) are blurring. Just as computers and TV are merging into one platform so is the ability to purchase alignment of a brand message within the content side of media — digital, print and broadcast.
This is tricky because a fine line exists here between useful, valuable, helpful messaging and something less than that. Nevertheless we can expect to see more of this ahead.
The Future…
Editorial media outreach is and will remain a relevant and significant part of the PR value proposition. That said, the strategic approach has changed from big distribution plays to focus on customization, relationship development, unique angles, exclusives and narrowcasting. And operating in parallel to earned media is a growing layer of direct forms of communication (and conversation in social platforms) where quality will forever outweigh quantity as the principle driver of effectiveness.
PR experts are content creators now in opt-in channels where relevance spells the difference between aggregating an audience of followers — or not. More strategy is required. More focus. More understanding of consumer desires and passions. More targeted, interactive media activity.
This is the first in our series of question/answer posts about effective communication, best practices in PR and social media and an occasional look inside Wheatley & Timmons.
Any burning questions you would like us to weigh in on? Let us know!
A backwards glance shows seismic shift in the PR world
By Robert Wheatley
It was without a doubt one of the most powerful PR campaigns I’ve ever been associated with. An entirely new product category created from scratch off a compelling, dynamic public relations strategy. Yes, I said PR — not advertising or sales promotion. Over $100 million in sales (and that’s in 1994 dollars) was achieved and an 84% share of market within 16 months of launch. It was the introduction of First Alert brand carbon monoxide alarm products.
Recently we heard from the Wall Street Journal that futurist Richard Dawson believes newspapers will be irrelevant by 2022. The reference point for this incredible shift can be more fully appreciated by briefly looking backwards to a moment in time when conventional print and broadcast media were popular and respected sources of news, information and influence on consumer behavior and public opinion.
Here’s the story of PR campaign media strategies that were built from a full-scale deployment of earned media tactics.
• And the approach is no longer as relevant. New businesses are now developed in an interactive, narrowcast environment without push-button scale-ability
The lesson: the old rules no longer apply. New media protocols, planning processes and program strategies literally demand a transformation of our beliefs about brand building, PR strategies, how PR firms are put together. Thus how we look at messaging, outreach, measurement and evaluation of ideas is different than it was even 10 years ago.
When editorial media ruled!!
It was 1993, the firm I owned at the time, Wheatley Blair, was hired by First Alert, the leading home safety products brand in the US. They had invented the residential smoke alarm category and literally owned the retail market for them. Rich Timmons, now principal and President of Wheatley & Timmons, was the global marketing chief at First Alert – a marketer who had followed conventional paths focused on TV advertising and who was going to do something unprecedented: launch the next biggest thing to come along in his company’s history through PR.
A new category: Carbon Monoxide (CO) Alarms
We were awestruck the moment we learned that CO poisoning was the largest source of accidental poisoning deaths in America.
First Alert had created the first affordable residential detector for this previously unseen and little understood hazard that claimed at least 1,500 lives every year and injured thousands more.
The Silent Killer
How do you convince Americans to protect themselves from a hazard you cannot see, taste, smell or touch? And after all, headaches are common and ubiquitous, right? We created a theme that dramatically defined the threat.
• Poison center physicians, indoor air quality experts, leading fire service officials and others were recruited to help explain the problem and support the solution
• We built the Carbon Monoxide Information Bureau to house the scientific and medical evidence
• Brought together consumers who had lost loved ones in CO accidents to personalize and make the hazard tangible and real
Launching a Media Tsunami
Media tours were conducted with CO survivors and coordinated with local fire department representatives. We booked medical expert appearances on TODAY, Good Morning America and all of the network news programs. Placed in-depth hazard education features in national newspapers and virtually every major daily in the US. Similar treatments on family protection were secured in women’s service, lifestyle and DIY magazines. We assembled an in-house TV news production department that was producing a regular flow of 90-second video news packages.
Our tracking on consumer media impressions within six months topped 700 million and grew to over a billion. There were 6 o’clock news stories in major markets about lines outside stores exclaiming that First Alert alarm products were sold out. A major trade publication featured a quote from a senior buyer at Walmart who described First Alert CO alarms as the “cabbage patch doll of the hardware department.”
A business was created. A category established. First Alert doubled in size. Thousands of lives were saved in the process. Importantly, editorial media in virtually all channels was the instrument of awareness, education and motivation. The decline of traction, audiences and the splintering of media into hundreds if not thousands of platforms of self-interest make this story simply a reflection of a another age in media communication.
The same product launch, repeated today would be wholly different and geared to empower individuals to spread the word as much as media properties are addressed to influence the influencers.
For First Alert we constructed a media machine that hummed and produced and delivered editorial attention. That is no longer the way communication operates. Yet many still attempt to apply the old rules of quantity thresholds to a world now devoted to the quality and personalization of encounters with communication.
Nine years after we began, the agency moved on to represent Kidde, the other leading category brand. We helped them secure the number one market share position. This dramatic video PSA was part of the effort:
Marketing can move from assertions of goodness to tangible proof points
By Robert Wheatley
There’s an interesting trend emerging in branded food products, one that’s about “inherent goodness, freshness, wholesomeness and balanced nutrition,” rather than vague assertions of good or better for you. This is just a great edible bandwagon and we hope to see more and more of it. Here’s why…
We operate today in the era of transparency and authenticity. Thus the product itself is front and center in the marketing. So genuine claims absolutely will trump any attempt to concoct a story more about marketing-speak than simple truth.
And simple is the transcending idea here: New products are gaining acceptance on simplified formulations — a sort of “less is more” proposition that authentically moves packaged food towards natural, real and additive free recipes. Ingredients you recognize and know. Marketing Daily has a fascinating article on the subject, tracking the emergence of products with fewer, more natural ingredients across an array of categories from beverages to meals and side dishes. This simple proposition invites scrutiny and boldly stands the acid test of what is essentially more wholesome by eliminating the artificial. On the snack front, Frito-Lay simply says the only thing in the bag of their Lays chips beside some potatoes, a bit of oil and salt is your hand. Haagen Dazs delivers great tasting ice cream with just five natural ingredients. Hmmm. How simple. (Tried the Coffee flavor – it was amazing).
If you claim you’re wholesome how does this secure more believability?
A fundamental tenet of sound public relations strategy is respect and advocacy for brand propositions and communications that accentuate and magnify what’s real and true. Consider the history of PR and its historical devotion to editorial channels of communication. We were obligated under the spotlight of editorial scrutiny to present truth and proof of what we claimed about a client’s product or service. We knew they would check into what we said, look for their owns sources to corroborate and then report.
So we labored greatly to line up the facts, provide the data and sources to validate our claims. (Of course Hollywood’s presentation of PR as hucksters and spin-doctors violates this idea of PR people as conveyors of truth. However, I happen to be telling– the truth). What can be more self-evident than a short, sweet and simple ingredients statement?
Now comes food that is deliciously straightforward. Goodness that invites inspection. That breathes the basics of healthier choice. How refreshing. We hunger now for real and are attracted to what’s honest. Better-for-you options made easier to identify and to believe through simplicity. As a marketer and PR expert I’m excited. Are You?
Agencies that lead bring more value than order takers
By Robert Wheatley
Hugh MacLeod is a creative and insightful expert who regularly exposes the soft underside of the marketing world — and helps us laugh at ourselves. His thoughts, expressed as graphic images, can be down right powerful. Today’s post in some respects is a perfect foil for a few of his engaging ideas. (Check out gapingvoid.com – and subscribe to his daily image emails).
Great work falling from great ideas can transform the future direction and growth of business. Yet more often than not, by definition, it will require clients to stretch, to have faith and take risk. And none of this will see the light of day unless agencies step up to passionately support and defend solid out-of-the-ordinary thinking. This is often the price of strategic concepts that are unique, unexpected and disruptive (in a positive way).
An insightful article on this subject was published today by Cory Treffelett of Catalyst SF. You can read it here . In his excellent piece he accurately describes the difference between a vendor and partner style relationship between agency and client. Essentially the order taker vs. the leader.
Good agencies are in the strategic idea creation business. Clients make investments in programs and concepts that will grow business, build brand reputation and attract or retain new customers. No easy task. And I can recount over the years in virtually every instance of needle-busting results, innovative concepts always supplied the accelerant. Thus risk and leadership is demanded of the agency.
The path of least resistance is easily followed and at times it feels much safer to stay within the comfortable bounds of serenity — a quiet surf made calm by the absence of tough discussion that can whip up a big wave or two along the way.
Fear – collectively our greatest enemy
What stands in the way of great ideas and game-changing initiatives? It’s fear. Fear of rocking the boat. Fear of losing the account. Fear of failure. Fear of disagreement. Fear of ruffling feathers. Fear of slaying sacred cows. Fear of the unknown. Fear of folded arms and taught expressions. Fear of shaking heads. Fear not being loved. Fear of losing the budget. Fear of the boss. Fear of mistakes. Fear of conflict. Fear of perception leading reality. Fear of risk, of making the big bet. This insidious human condition interferes so many times, closing the gate on otherwise powerful moves that may occasionally require a willingness to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”
This is not a call to arrogance and conceited behavior by the way. What is in the client’s best interests at all times will be growth and development of their brand and their business results. The fact that innovation is often at the fulcrum of transformative periods only means that risk will be part of the mix in bringing these things to fruition. Clients who are challenged by their agencies to accomplish more through bolder initiatives are needed now more than ever. And are often in short supply for all of the reasons mentioned above. Just take the order, do the work and make sure everyone is happy and smiling all of the time? No great thing was ever accomplished by simply riding the existing wave. Blazing a new trail will be required of us.
Agencies and Clients Together Offer the Best Formula…
There’s an old saying, “an agency is only as good as its client.” Well in some end-game sort of reference I suppose this is true if all you ever hear is no. Should clients run from risk and punish their agency for bringing bold ideas then Houston, we have a problem!! Ultimately however, agencies have an obligation to bring this kind of thinking routinely. It should be the rule rather than the exception.
Clients can help this process by openly inviting and encouraging their agency partners to challenge them, to say no when its necessary, to think big, to look for new territory to trail-blaze. In essence to disrupt the category conventions and accepted brand behaviors that can deter major leaps ahead. Clients also acquire an obligation: to be willing to approve and fund campaigns with risk involved. And be prepared to accept a mistake along the way and learn from it.
This kind of healthy give and take — lively discourse built around discovery and epiphany — is essential if transformative programs are to get out of the developmental garage. Our daily mantra should be to make this quest genuinely a part of our culture and operating philosophy. To do less is to compromise the values and integrity of what we’re on the planet to accomplish.
Can we really fly blind and expect to be effective?
By Robert Wheatley
There are those great moments of clarity when something hits you. Often it can be something you already know, but your perspective and its horsepower (importance) will get injected with an entirely new level of “amen” when understanding adjusts or elevates a bit. Sorry to be oblique – this happened today while reading Brian Solis’ great book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.” Yes, there’s a point here and a recommendation.
The emergence of social media has changed the game for PR communications, to be sure. For instance as we’ve heard from virtually every social media pundit, conversation is better than any attempted monologue in brand communication strategy. Frankly its just wayyyy more difficult these days to push messages at people and get any traction. So communication that’s truly effective is no longer one-way.
That means PR people no longer sit solely on a “dissemination” platform (press releases, editor desk-sides, spokesperson media tours) to move messages outward through various channels of non-paid or earned media.
Now relationships and dialogue with influencers and other forms of “democratized” media have to be layered into the brand outreach recipe. What over-arching strategic issue does this immediately recommend? Listening.
Let’s look at the fundamental “best practices” involved in relationship building. If the best conversationalists are always the best listeners, and if brands must form relationships with their best users based on behaviors that approach similarity to what we would call real-world friendships rather than “transactional” relationships, does it stand to reason we should be hearing our best customers?
If relationships are to work, they’re built from a foundation of shared interest. And as covered many times in this blog, we know that brand relationships are earned based on what a marketer does to correctly discern and understand the consumer’s passions and concerns. And then operate as an enabler, facilitator, educator an community builder.
Furthermore if the media landscape is littered with self-published content created by customers, then it only makes sense to know what they’re saying, good or bad.
So listening jumps to the front as an integral part of fundamental PR strategy in the digital age. Right? Yet more often than not it is at the tail end of consideration in plans and sometimes the first to fall off the budget truck when pressure builds to make some cuts.
Of course formal Web-based listening tools should be employed and made integral to PR plans. They should also, however, receive the priority they deserve to be preserved when sacrifices are targeted on the spending front. This takes understanding on both the agency and client sides of the table about the value of it. To do less in some respects is to say that pushing messages outward remains the first and most important path.
Relevant communication springs from understanding. And that’s an outcome of getting quiet for awhile, and paying close attention to the conversations going on all around.
I for one will feel more comfortable as we work harder and with greater resolve to build the listening tools into the front end of the campaign strategy, and not a final layer that almost invites elimination due to its perceived lack of priority.
New prescription for growth all about burrowing in on your best prospects
By Robert Wheatley
I have a confession to make: I’m a music fan . Big time. And have been almost all of my life. I sang my way through high school. Played guitar in a band. Had a vocal music scholarship when I started college. Ended up as the promoter and producer of all the rock concerts that appeared at my University. Had family and personal acquaintances in the rock concert promotion and band management business (Heart). Even today one of my Chicago friends is now a senior player at LiveNation, one of the largest live music organizations on the planet.
So what is it with me and music? I can’t really answer that. Born that way maybe. I’m also a culinary fan. Wine fan. Antique and art fan. Auto buff. Writer. Fan of parenting (and my daughters) generally. Talk to me, inform me about these things and I’m listening. Intently.
In the last post we explored the sea change in American attitudes about life and what matters, as people now hunger for greater meaning, purpose and belonging more so than consuming. So too, brands and businesses that identify and mine “consumer tribes” coalescing around lifestyle aspirations and interests have a better shot at sustainable growth. Why? Because the value added by these brands is aligned not just with commerce and direct selling but also being a facilitator of activities and experiences the consumer cares about.
Take for example the DIY home decorating and fixing game. There are tribes of consumers who get significant emotional and personal payback from taking on projects aimed at improving or changing their homes. Brands that become facilitators and advisors in this endeavor can earn a place (relationship) in the consumer’s life by virtue of their unselfish behaviors. And why bother? The relationship precedes the willingness to pay any attention to marketing and brand communication.
Virtually every category has its heavy users, or fan-base of individuals who are more engaged and involved, based on their unique personal interests…Do you know them? Study them? Listen to them?
Get Focused.
Witness the tightly focused business model of Internet site Songkick – a relatively new rising-star brand on the music scene that is quickly putting a differentiated foot-print on the live concert business. They are working hard to listen to and follow their best customers.
Music and sports share something in common: the emotional relevance they retain with their greatest fans. When the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, hundreds of thousands of Hawk enthusiasts lined the Windy Cities’ streets to cheer and celebrate with the team. It was an amazing example of the power of sports to motivate people.
Music holds a similar value proposition. To some it’s an integral expression of their lifestyle interests. Who knows what is exactly at the root of this? Could it be some special gene that resonates to music in a powerful way? Bands and musicians are heroes to be sure. For some concert going is important and a reflection of how they define themselves. I would know. Sure Songkick follows the larger acts, but their unique effort to aggregate information about local bands helps drive their value and relevance to fans.
Go Deep.
Songkick helps facilitate fan devotion and involvement by helping people easily track information, events and news about their favorite artists. And post photos and share experiences they’ve had at concerts. Yes they’re making money from ticket sale commissions. That said the online presentation and interaction is more about the music than the commerce. Thus we see another example of earning a place in the music-centric consumer’s life.
Mine Relevance.
How would you describe a music lover’s lifestyle? How can you add value to it? What other attributes and benefits can be developed for those who see music as more than background ambiance or a date night piece of entertainment? The more relevant you are the more valuable you become. How close can you bring the music lover to the music creators and players? It’s an interesting proposition. Brands that matter to their users will gain greater ground in the long haul than those that currently move ahead on the basis of habit, history/tradition or ubiquity.
DIYers, home cooks, travel buffs, fashionistas – there are people out there who care, who pay attention, who will listen, who are engaged right now because of their personal interests and preferences. What’s the way in? Well that’s the $64,000 question. If you treat customer relationships more like friendships then you start to get the picture. Help them in-order to engage them.
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