By Bob Wheatley

Photo credit: Sharon Dominik

Forever and a day I’ve seen this concept play out in various categories from beverages to food, travel services to floor care and cleaning products, that 80% of your profits can routinely come from 20% of your customers who constitute the most engaged, heavy users in your business. Call them your best fans.

Yet routinely we focus our efforts, strategies and spending on casting a broad net. We try to be appealing to everyone because we keep telling ourselves that our brand and business not only deserves high household penetration, but “we can’t ignore the volume opportunities.” To be sure, but the 20% that’s mainlining your brand and paying attention to your messaging with a little help and “enabling” can become a more productive core of real-world ambassadors. People who can help spread the word effectively to those who are not as fully invested and who don’t buy as often.

Take cheese and pet food for example. Cheese is one of the most popular food categories in supermarkets. We like cheese, so it’s a big volume business. Yet a closer look reveals that consumers who are more emotionally engaged and devoted to cooking represent a “heavy user” profile that purchases more cheese products, more often and in many cases will go for higher priced items when they feel the value proposition is credible. So paying closer attention to this group of emotionally charged ‘kitchen commanders’ can yield incremental benefits in talk value and word of mouth, once they’re fully embraced, recognized and rewarded by the brands they love.

Or in pet food: a dynamic audience combination we refer to as indulgers and doters consists of a high percentage of higher income households who treat their animals like family members — and will even go as far as cutting back on some of their own discretionary purchases in order to keep Fido in tip top shape by feeding him a super-premium pet food diet. Industry statistics show this group continues to fuel an incredible growth track record in the emerging natural and organic segment – even though the tough economy has weighed in heavily in many segments to compel “trading down” behaviors.

Your call to action…

Think of it this way, your PR communications ROI outcomes will improve when communicating with an audience that’s really, genuinely paying attention. Those who have emotional, personal lifestyle connections to a brand are listening — first at the category level. A brand that works over time to mine relevance with this audience has the opportunity to build a unique relationship and bond. Conversely broad awareness tactics can perform as a “reminder mechanism” for the larger audience segments out there who may buy less often but who have ties to the franchise through their habit behaviors.

1. Consider for a moment the opportunities from investing more fully in courting your heavy users. What would you do differently? What efforts might you undertake to help create a community around these groups and empower them to interact with each other – especially important for home chefs and pet parents who want to share tips, ideas, experiences and insights with each other.

2. What rewards and recognition can you offer to your most devoted followers that surprise and delight – and thus are often the triggers to generating strong, credible and organic word-of-mouth communication.

3. What sponsored experiences can you create and deliver that bring your brand as close as possible to your best fans and allow them to interact with you and each other. In food this could include unique culinary experiences that reward your best customers with an opportunity to learn from the food heroes they respect like celebrity chefs. For pets it could be local dog park events and contests that allow pet parents to engage in shared experiences with their animal and with each other.

But wait there’s more…

Today, excellent blogger and thought leader Sonia Simone has an interesting post at Copyblogger that talks about the personal side of the Pareto Principle and how it impacts you and what you do. Her observations:

“…Which means that 20% of your customers provide 80% of your revenue. 20% of the time you spend behind your computer provides 80% of your best work. And 20% of that great meal you had last night provided 80% of the pleasure. (It was the chocolate mousse cake, wasn’t it?)

Because of the Pareto Principle, there’s always a “20%” you should be spending your time on. And in just about every discipline, it’s known as the fundamentals.”

Have you sat down to think about your day, your activities and to reflect on this idea – that 20% of your efforts will produce 80% of the great results and accomplishments you’re looking for? So what do the fundamentals look like for you? Maybe it’s a good idea to start by putting more energy and investment into courting your biggest fans…

By Robert Wheatley

Image c/o Getty Image

When I first got started in the PR business, I was impressed with our unique ability to bring a higher standard of proof, credibility and demonstration to new products and brand promises. But additionally I was concerned by an all-too-frequent focus on tactics (read: publicity) and what appeared to me to be an absence of connecting the dots between our work and business strategy. You know the old saying, “if the only thing you do is a hammer then the answer to every problem will be a nail.”

Just seemed to me that a stronger business proposition was to help client’s better understand their barriers to growth and success – before applying the cure. And in doing so to make sure the remedy laddered back to specific business outcomes, not fuzzy claims of “increased awareness.”

My first attempt at changing the view that PR was the province of press releases came in the form of a brand guidance plan developed for a regional food company called Nalley’s Fine Foods, based in Tacoma, Washington. My client didn’t ask for the plan, instead I treated this as “extracurricular” homework that might open the door to a larger playing field for our firm. It did.

In its day Nalley’s was a successful brand playing effectively in categories dominated by national stalwarts like Kraft, Frito-Lay and Vlasic – from salad dressings to snacks, canned meals, pickles and other packaged food categories. The platform I worked on was a refined recipe for go-to-market strategy and new product development behaviors appropriate for a business that sat in between generic store brand and large national players.

To get it done I had to study the categories and more fully acquaint myself with the channels of distribution and the growth drivers within each product category my client was competing in. There was no mention of PR in the brief. It was a great exercise and I learned a lot. The client was impressed that a PR guy would come to the table with this sort of perspective. Their opinion of what we did and were about changed. It was interesting to watch the transformation in their views and opinions. The experience had an impact to this day.

Wheatley & Timmons is a unique joining of similar strands of thinking – that the craft of editorial and social media forms of communication are enhanced and our value to clients improved as we marry our great creative work more closely to brand strategy guidance and the consumer insights required to make that leap.

It would probably be easier just to continue cultivating our best practices along traditional lines and devote all of our energies to being great tacticians. We think that’s table stakes. We fundamentally believe the world needs a better, more strategic PR firm and so we’re not satisfied with the traditional scope. My partner, Rich Timmons, shares this view and it’s our collective mission to redefine what a PR firm is all about. Missionary work to be sure given the perceptual baggage we carry with us — that “get me on Oprah” thing.

I couldn’t be prouder of the great people who’ve joined our team and their ability to embrace our calling and to deliver on this promise every day in the services we provide. It’s a challenge, but I think part of what makes you successful is your willingness to embrace a higher calling – to tackle something that goes beyond the communications training you’ve had. Makes you stretch.

Have we got it all figured out? Not by a long shot. Everyday is a learning experience, a chance to grow and refine our premise and our capabilities to deliver. We remain steadfastly determined on this path. Persistence can be a great ally, so we forge ahead and believe it’s by “demonstrating and doing” that all of this comes to life. This agency’s work for Sargento Foods is an example of bringing new perspective and ideas to the table about a brand’s future business opportunities in their category. Much the same as Rich and our team has done to such dramatic effect for Thermos brand and for Crescent in the art framing business.

We’re in the early stages of a new relationship with Crown Imports and the Corona beer franchise. It’s exciting. And not just because we know the beer business, but also we believe we can play a measurable role in helping improve their business outcomes and relevancy to a consumer — who is evolving right now.

The future

We believe that earned media (various forms of editorial media from conventional to digital) will continue to be vital but also see incremental growth for “owned” media – content created, published and distributed by brands themselves. Technology now allows us to leapfrog reporters, editors, producers and other media gatekeepers, to talk directly to consumers in environments that are more interactive and thus seen as honest.

Profoundly we see the mix of media solutions moving to embrace social platforms and other venues where brands and consumers can meet each other on more equal terms. Thus the over-arching need for relevancy between brand propositions and the lifestyle interests of their users.

One lesson remains true, from the days with Nalley’s to our work at Wheatley & Timmons over the next ten years: whatever we do in communications must be tied to a foundation of consumer insight and understanding. It’s what will inform our future and our ability to change and improve the growth path of the brands we represent.

I for one am looking forward to it. Cheers…

Bob Wheatley

Remember Bill Clinton’s distillation of his Presidential campaign bid to one singular message platform: It’s the economy, stupid. Similarly the onion surrounding social media success for brands and business can be peeled back to reveal one central and over-arching truth – it’s the content that drives the attraction value, fan-base growth and conversation.

Never before in the history of brand marketing and PR have we been in such a position to build credible relationships, real ones, with those we wish to communicate with.

Image c/o Getty Images

Throwing messaging baseballs

Yet so many in the communications business these days seem hell-bent on continuing to push self-serving messaging AT people in every media pathway. Why? Because we’re so used to sitting down and defining what we want to “convince” audiences of about our brand. We labor greatly to define key messages and then look at every vehicle out there as a vessel for delivering the message payload, be it paid, earned or owned media. We throw messaging baseballs at people expecting them to step up and catch them.

Oops they dropped the ball

But more often than not, consumers drop the ball, walk away from home plate and simply ignore the spinning missive at it passes by. They don’t want to play the game that way. Social media is by its very definition an “accrual” proposition. Your Facebook page or Twitter account begins with an audience of zero. Unlike every medium that’s come before it where access to a given media property brought you a specific audience size and type. In the new world of owned media, you start at the beginning. With nothing.

Building the fan base

Aggregating an audience is an outcome of great content, conversation and meaningful offers. The authenticity and value of that content is related directly to its relevance to the consumer’s lifestyle interests. Thus brands must find a path to “hook-up” with consumers based on what THEY care about, not the other way around.

1. For the food brand it might be enabling a recipe sharing community or bringing consumers into contact with their kitchen heroes like chefs.

2. For a beverage brand it could be enabling unique social experiences and providing ways for fans to share their impressions and ideas with each other.

3. For a fashion brand it might involve helping fashion-forward people to share their ideas and insights on what to wear for different occasions, from beach to ballroom.

Eyes wide open

This whole process gets a lot clearer when brands employ consumer insight research to better understand the lifestyle interests and needs of their core consumers. Then ask themselves: what can the brand do to facilitate, enable or create opportunities to experience and share those things?

Building better brand relationships

Content that’s meaningful, valuable, interesting and entertaining is the path to establishing a community of engaged fans. Here are a few practical hints for doing it right.

• Multi-media is the way to go. Facebook’s share functionality only works when multi-media contact is used – podcasts and videos for instance.

• Ask questions. Interactivity occurs when we purposefully invite our community into the conversation, seeking their views, ideas and opinions.

• Use emotional terms and words. We are not fact-based, analytical decision making machines. We are expectation creation machines and thus frame our brand relationships based on feelings more than facts. Are you using emotive words?

• Responsiveness. The “get back to me” bar is considerably higher in the digital era. Consumers want and expect quick responses to their questions. Speed matters and being responsive is part of the assessment of how well your brand performs in the social media space.

• Conversation. Like-minded individuals congregate together in specific communities because of their shared interests. Are you helping enable their ability to talk with one another?

• Surprise and delight. Reward your fans with special offers and values they won’t get elsewhere. Recognize your most faithful followers with special status and access to unique content or other VIP experiences.

Social media is working well when its done right. Enough so that some sizable brands are upping their social media investments. Kellogg just announced they’re tripling their social media budget in the year ahead.

What do you think?

Girl Scouts effectively tap social media engagement

By Robert Wheatley

Social media can be powerful — when deployed effectively. YouTube provides a readily accessible platform where video can engage a broad and diverse audience — but only if it’s done right.

Meaning, the content thus is initially more important than the medium. In the absence of compelling content, social media is just a distribution platform. The viral rubber meets the road when the communication itself is relevant, interesting and thought provoking.

So today we have a living example of “right” from the Girl Scouts.

My seven-year-old daughter Heather is a Daisy this year, the entry-level designation for Girl Scouts to be. And, as you’d expect she’s selling cookies. An recurring metaphor for Girl Scout-dom that seems it’s been institutionalized as an annual right of passage for eons. She came by the agency office recently to tempt the staff with the baked delights. Virtually everyone signed up.

You don’t really think about the value of it other than the surface view that it raises funds for the organization, and you get a tasty treat in return. It’s a fair exchange. But what if you elevate the whole idea to a stronger context. What if you can re-position the perspective on cookie sales to a more meaningful and valuable proposition?

Today Marketing Daily ran a piece about the Girl Scouts’ effort to reframe the cookie sale program into an emotional call-to-action. It’s about the character-building outcomes of doing this. All housed within a deeper understanding of how the proceeds go to help others.

Watch it here:

It’s a terrific piece of story telling that uses the video medium effectively. Short, consumable, powerful – everything you want in a compelling trip to social media interaction. You watch – THEN decide how many boxes you really want. I dare you.

What do you think?

Self-interests can no longer be served through selfishness….

By Robert Wheatley

Image c/o Philip and Karen Smith

With all of the conversation and discussion about the explosion of social media, and the era of two-way engagement and conversation that shift ushers in, you’d think businesses must be falling to their collective knees in a sort of Road-to-Damascus epiphany about discovering a new path to building brands. Have we seen the light?

Has a new marketing and communications religion taken hold? Apparently it’s still a work in progress. We learn that the vast majority of marketing spending still flows down the hide-bound and intractable pipe of interruption media and its embedded agenda to disrupt, persuade and imprint messages.

Oscar Wilde once quipped, “I can resist anything except temptation,” and so the addiction to push media solutions rolls on. Like a massive electric motor bolted to the floor of an industrial age power plant, the tradition-bound backbone of brand marketing built from an interruptive model continues to spin on its own inertia.

• Consumers are not walking wallets merely to be sold. If anything there’s a refined “selling detector” that’s emerged as consumer’s turn away from and avoid or ignore blatant pitches in favor or more interesting and helpful forms of brand interaction.

We’ve institutionalized a legacy over time of brand narcissism that should evolve. It’s not all about us anymore. Yes, the fundamental goal of a business organization is to sell more stuff more often and more profitably.

But if the tone, tenor and manner in which we go about achieving business objectives flows from a view that consumers are merely walking wallets, then we’ve failed to grasp the fundamental changes that impact how great brands are built in the age of consumer control. Behaviors that reinforce customer relationships as transactions-to-sweep-in only lack understanding that consumers now control brand interaction. And so we must move from push to engage, from tell to listen, from imprint to co-create.

Brand narcissism is a systemic problem. It emanates from deep-seated behaviors that suggest company’s can compel consumers into favorable purchase behavior at will. Years of pushing messages and other tactics at consumers continues, whether openly acknowledged or not, to flow from a belief that the one-size fits-all consumer will do what we tell them to do.

Not so.

What’s needed…?

1. Enduring brand relationships are now built from a foundation of mutual respect, interest and caring.

2. Brands must earn permission for a relationship with core customers by aligning themselves with their unique lifestyle passions and interests.

3. A form of brand selflessness must authentically take root — such that all points of contact reverberate with the same level of reverence for consumers as friends of the brand, not just targets to target.

The change here is more attitudinal than anything else. Once consideration is given towards how a brand can mine a “higher purpose” built around reciprocity, then we have room to move to refine strategies that will help effectively build a foundation of trust. And let’s be clear, trust is the fabric that binds brands to consumers.

It is the absence of meaning, compelling value and trust that turns businesses into commodities…

Social media by the way is a partner in all of this, not a stand-alone panacea. Engagement media gets interesting and valuable when it is integrated as a component part of all forms of outreach.

We’ll examine more of media integration piece tomorrow. What do you think?

By: Carrie Becker

Image c/o Flickr Thomas Hawk

Too often we hear stories of brands ignoring new technology and communications tools because they can’t grasp the ROI (or, more often, they don’t want to hear consumers complain!). Then in some unforeseen chain of events the brand must quickly engage the tools to overcome a communications crisis (e.g. Twitter response by new moms’ to poorly positioned Motrin advertising). Fortunately, I have a positive story that may help uncover the benefits of a two-way conversation with your customers.

My husband and I are beer drinkers (which makes it even more rewarding that Wheatley & Timmons handles communication strategy for the Modelo Brewing Group portfolio). Last night, I was winding down my weekend with a beer from a craft beer brewer, Dogfish Head. I’ve had their beer on a number of occasions and always found the same reliable, quality and taste.

Unfortunately, when I just wanted to savor one more sip of the relaxing weekend, my beer had other plans. Something was off and the taste replicated more grape juice flavors than the caramel and vanilla taste I had hoped for.

With a bit of frustration at 8:52pm (cst) I tweeted out “agh! my dogfish head palo santo tastes like grape juice WTF…I’ve had corked wine but don’t know what to call this beer.”

Within three minutes, one of my followers, Matthew Horbund (@mmWine), a wine consultant and blogger, responded that I should ask professional beer writer Ashley Routson (@TheBeerWench) what may be wrong.

Now, I do follow Dogfish Head on Twitter (@dogfishheadbeer) but at this point in the night I didn’t think anyone would be there to solve my problem so I just left it alone (*note to self: in the future, just send a tweet to Dogfish Head. THEY LISTEN!).

By 6:03am, I received a tweet from @dogfishheadbeer, “Not good – can you DM me an email address? Our QC folks would love to get some details from you (bottle data, etc).” From that point, I was quickly put in touch with quality control and was able to offer them the data on the bottle. I was then put in touch with a local rep who picked up the bottle from my house and made a visit to the wine and spirits store where we purchased the bottle.

As a consumer and also a brand strategist, there were a few things that ran through my head throughout this experience:

First, after I drank the off tasting beverage:
I was completely surprised that I was having a poor experience with Dogfish Head, a brewery I trust to always put out quality product. It made me consider that perhaps quality control had slacked. Could I trust my next beer selection with them?

Then, after receiving the first tweet and following rapid correspondence from DogFish Head:
I was completely geeked-out by the amazing commitment the company had to their product and their customers. They used listening tools to seek out what customers are saying. They LISTENED then used the opportunity to make a situation better. Plus, this did not take much additional effort by the customer (me). They sought the information and ran with the response.

This for me is a perfect case of when a company is truly LISTENING and showing commitment to their product and their customers.

Are there any other brands that you feel are good ‘Listeners’?

If you are interested in some additional insight in how to better connect with your consumers, I’d love the opportunity to chat. I love chatting about wine, food and building consumer relationships. Email me: cbecker@wheatleytimmons.com or find me on Twitter: twitter.com/CarrieBecker7