Periodically we celebrate excellent work, great campaigns and ideas that represent a measure of vision and innovation. For the most part we chronicle higher-calling projects that can impact brand behavior. But every so often a more tactical bit of communications wizardry comes along that you just have to recognize and salute for its sheer out-of-the-box brilliance.
Certainly there’s strategic linkage between the Tropicana brand of OJ and sunshine – the warmth and glow often attributed to Florida orange groves where this delicious fruit gets its healthy props.
So the brand evidently decides that working with portable sunshine can serve as a platform for effective, engaging and maybe entertaining online video communication – as well as serving to underscore a bright metaphor that’s tied to the juice’s origins.
I would have loved to be in the Tropicana conference room when this idea was presented — just to see the reaction, the questions and the process that led to approval. I say that because of the boldness and uniqueness of the project.
Just imagine for a moment: in a small Arctic Circle town in northern Canada each year they go through a period of near total darkness – a continual and unrelenting nighttime. So Tropicana sends an expedition to the town, hauling in a giant gas filled balloon-like object in the shape of the sun. The orb is erected and lit, spreading artificial sunshine and undoubtedly some cheer to local residents…. Not to miss a product tie-in opportunity, the crew passes out OJ bottles to the enraptured onlookers as they marvel at the spectacle of man-made sunshine.
The entire story is deftly shot on video with a thoughtful music track underneath and made share-able with the rest of the world through YouTube and Facebook. Watch it here:
Bravo to Tropicana for bringing a little light to the lives of these Arctic dwellers — and then allowing the rest of us to observe and enjoy the experience. Disruptive isn’t it? Unexpected. Entertaining. Memorable. Emotional. 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.
Robert Mondavi Blazes Consumer Engagement at Chicago Gourmet and Beyond
In the wine world, tasting events are the root of all marketing outreach efforts. The entry to participate alone weighs heavily on both time and cost investments. However, there are not many other ways to replace the experience of swirling, sipping and talking with your consumer one-on-one.
Understanding both the importance and the investment, many brands see just getting to the event as crossing the finish line of consumer engagement. But, if you are not activating your brand presence, someone else is stealing your share-of-voice and your next customer.
One brand that I admire for their successful event execution and consumer engagement is the Robert Mondavi brand of wines. Recently, I enjoyed experiencing their brand at the culinary, wine and spirits consumer event, Chicago Gourmet.
Here’s my run down of what Robert Mondavi did right and how you can take some pointers:
On-site Engagement: Education
Don’t just offer a wine sample. Add some value to the consumer experience and your impression will last beyond the event. Robert Mondavi has a beautifully designed traveling event that emulates their brand identity. Within their space they offer a sensory station to learn about the nuances of different varietals and throughout the event they host-cooking demonstrations and wine 101 classes led by their brand ambassadors.
Credibility Building: Spokesperson Sponsorship
What are the sources you trust for information on wine? Trade magazines, Robert Parker ratings, wine analysts, trend reports? Now, who does your consumer trust? You? Well, maybe your winemaker but sorry he/she needs someone else to give your wine a seal of approval. Robert Mondavi cleverly partnered with well-recognized and credited food and wine writer and culinary TV personality, Ted Allen, to elevate their Private Selection portfolio of wine. As their spokesperson, Ted helps spread the brand message leading up to events with local media appearances, integrates in event content as a seminar speaker and is available for giving consumers some very engaging one-on-one consumer time by attending the event.
Contests are a dime a dozen and many times miss hitting the core consumer when not honed in on the passions and interests of the consumer. Tapping into the star power of their relevant spokesperson, Ted Allen, Robert Mondavi asked consumers to submit a wine question to Ted for a chance to meet him for dinner at a high-end restaurant. The entry was simple for a wine enthusiast and it weeded out any professional contest applicants when asking a question relevant to the spokesperson and the brand.
(Full disclosure: I was one of the winners. The experience was memorable and you could not fit a more genuine and authentic group of folks in one room. Here again the experience and reach of the brand went beyond the event especially when contest winners like me blogged about the experience on our food and personal blogs.)
How else can you activate consumer engagement at events? How else should you extend the experience beyond an event space footprint?
My quick answer: applying a social media strategy.
Perhaps Robert Mondavi could employ live blogging or vlogging from the event or reward those who follow them on Facebook or Twitter by receiving an incentive when they visit the booth. This extra layer of engagement builds the conversation and strengthens the bond between consumer and brand.
But more on this for a later post.
If you are interested in some additional insight in how to better connect with your consumer at events and beyond, 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
For years (wow, has it been that long?) this blog has extolled and showcased the virtues of finding and mining the brands’ higher purpose.A sweet spot that serves as the umbilical chord between a brand and hyper-relevant concerns, issues and passions in the consumer’s life.
And why does this matter? Because anything less than a bond based on this kind of emotionally charged value can lead to commoditization — and the downward spiral of a brand’s core value proposition. So this is a frequent subject here because it is so important to brand building in the digital “consumer-is-in-control†age.
Pampers “pampers†their target’s true needs…
One could assume that Pampers brand is in the business of providing a convenient, absorbent product to help protect baby bottoms. Think of all the investment that must go into diaper materials research to offer comfort while fulfilling the primary dryness mission. Or design engineering to prevent leaks. And what about those closure mechanisms to keep the diaper in place when baby is moving. We can’t forget the cartoon character licenses to dress up the diaper exterior and presumably bring a smile to both baby and mom.
Well the day of feature and benefit selling as we’ve come to know it is over. These things while important are table-stakes. Great design and technology is a given. The competitive formula has evolved and moved on. Successful brands in the years ahead will be those that “matter†to their primary buyers. The brand value proposition is no longer simple math around the analytical facts that ladder up to “superior.â€
Emotion precedes logic…
It is vital for brands to determine what their essential meaning can be to users. And that meaning by the way is going to be found beyond simple, analytical distillation of the core product attributes themselves.
Pampers brand has famously arrived at this understanding. What is the core truth for new parents? The awesome, lifelong responsibility they are about to undertake comes with no user manual. Parenting is a big, big transition in life, full of delights, stresses and surprises. Children change everything.
So is Pampers ultimately selling diapers? No. They recognized that the path to “permission†for a brand relationship is tied to how they can best help, assist and support this central parenting mission.
A Parent is Born – what a fantastic statement that simply nails the point. With every first birth a new parent is born, too. The journey Pampers embarks on puts the brand in league with the none-too-trivial concerns their buyers have about caring for their new child.
There’s simply no end to the extensions and content-deep communications territory this “mission†will yield. To start with they’ve created a documentary series of videos (see them here, here and here) that chronicle the real-life experiences of a brand new family. They are thoughtfully produced with a balance of entertainment value and the transfer of authentic, real parenting experiences.
This platform is perfectly suited to social media channels, such as integration with mommy bloggers for mom-to-mom interaction. Importantly the whole project elevates the brand’s relationship and value to mom and dad. The emotional equity this creates over time is palpable.The unselfishness in the messaging completes the circle of credibility. Nothing comes across as a sales pitch. Because it doesn’t have to!
Stop pitching, start relating…
P&G has determined that treating consumers as objects to sell to isn’t nearly as powerful as treating them as individuals to help, assist and support, and in doing so to earn a valued position on the consumer’s list of brand’s they care about.
It may sound counterintuitive to those who think you must hammer away at benefits. Well, consumers are already better educated and informed than at any other time in human history. The old tell them, tell them again and then tell them what you told them era of selling is done.
So now it’s time to look for the higher purpose for your brand. In doing so you will open the door to a brand related bond. Plus open engagement and conversation with a customer who is actually listening, and that leads to preference. And preference drives sales.
One of the most endearing qualities of AMC’sMad Men series is its slavish devotion to authenticity – and not just the period dress and behaviors. The Sterling Cooper milieu is recognize-able for many in the agency business (PR or ad) even now, who can literally live alongside Don Draper in their creative strategy conversations and presentations.
We’ve Been There…
We resonate because of its relevance to our own business lives and experiences. We listen to Don and his minions discuss a client problem and know the thread of the conversation, because we’ve been there so many times before. Sure the work and its final execution exudes the sensibilities and cultural axioms of its era, but the mental activity around solution-building bears similarity to the leaps we work so hard to make – leaps that fall from deeper insight about consumer needs and desires.
Recognizing the Culture of Creativity…
Our organization is built around daily walks down the creative PR path. We dig for insights, we work very hard to unearth ideas that blow past the limitations of product features, to translate benefits in more powerful ways. In Mad Men this happened wonderfully in a dramatic meeting with Kodak and the launch of its eponymous “Carousel†slide projector — a revolutionary idea in its day.
In the show, Kodak reps wax on about the gizmo’s “space-age†technical achievements and capability. Naturally they think these things constitute its chief selling proposition.
Then, along comes Don and his innate ability to make the leap. In the agency’s creative presentation he says: “This is not a spaceship. It’s a time machine. It goes backwards and forwards, and it takes us to a place where we ache to go again.†This statement conveyed while images play of his wife and family in happier times.
It was a moment of vintage leap to be sure. The presentation gently forced the Kodak guys to rethink what they we’re really selling. So, fast-forward. What constitutes the leap in 2009? What is the essential shift in our current world that must drive creativity and ideas?
Relevance in the World of Permission
In Don Draper’s day, you told the consumer what to do. Quite often they did it. Hence the era of mass-vertising, shotgun publicity strategies and their efficiencies propelled by routine effectiveness. Controlled messages were conveyed broadly. Repeatedly. Broad-based publicity efforts drove coverage across large swaths of media territory – millions of impressions racked up in various channels and to great impact on the awareness meter. Clip books were a mile thick.
Now the consumer holds the reigns in the equation, and the marketing world is dominated by unique “tribes†and narrow markets of consumer self-interest. Paid media has lost traction because consumers have tuned out what they perceive to be an interruption. Media itself has splintered into thousands of channels. The strategy is peer-to-peer more than message delivered to gazillions of aggregated eyeballs. It’s about the quality of conversation not quantity of heads exposed to a message.
Brands must now earn permission for a consumer relationship through ideas, acts and programs that “help†consumers realize their personal lifestyle dreams and aspirations. The Leap falls from a new form of understanding: strategy flows from a businesses’ ability to understand the fabric of lifestyle relevance and mine it. The Kodak moment transcends to enabling different, unique communities of shared memory and experience. Kodak should have invented Flickr.
Mad Men is a curious mirror for agency folk. Our work today is in many ways the same: know thy audience. And in many ways different:we don’t dictate, persuade or compel. Instead we invite, converse, help and demonstrate our willingness to earn faith and trust.
Ok, you can stop laughing now. No really. Yes, this is me. I said stop laughing. Anyone hazard a guess on when??
Try 1977. Hopefully that helps explain the hair and stache combo. For those of you not old enough to get the era, the look actually was fairly typical for a guy of my 25 years at the time. This was my first job in PR after a short stint promoting rock concerts. Rocker boy turned farmer? Hardly. The assignment was for the King County government – surrounding the city of Seattle. I was working on a truly innovative project that eventually helped my boss, John Spellman, get elected Governor of the State of Washington.
This newspaper story was about me and what I was up to – sort of a local boy does good treatment. So here I am, standing in a field in front of a tractor, and yes, this farm is in the city. No I did not grow up on a farm and have never milked a cow.
Preserving Urban Agriculture
Not that I’m necessarily the tree-hugging type, but I really thought this project, in its day, was innovative and certainly precedent setting. I had this idea to put a brand identity (King County Fresh) on local produce, honey, and other agricultural products farmed in the urban environs. The t-shirt I’m wearing, a sort of bright Kelly green with reversed out white graphic showcased the Fresh logo, used on POP materials, product stickers and in transit ads to promote the effort. The goal: help create a stronger economic climate that would help keep urban agriculture viable at a time when farmland was disappearing faster than you can say, “Hey, is that a new shopping mall?”
The public policy concept at the time was revolutionary, only Long Island near New York City was also on the same track – to purchase the development rights to farmland, preserving their agricultural use — thus ensuring a steady flow of fresh products into the local market place.
Brands and Value-Added Meaning
I wanted people to know about and be able to recognize locally grown products. The difference in freshness and taste is remarkable. And our research suggested that people (voters) wanted to support local farms and help preserve them. So the King County Fresh campaign was novel in its day –intended to imbue some of the emotional values of branding on commodities like lettuce, corn and melons. The end game: consumers could vote with their pocketbooks to select local products stickered with the Fresh logo or merchandised in a retail section with POP material that showcased the identity.
Media got up for this because statistics revealed local farmland was going the way of the parking lot at an alarming rate. Farmers got excited because they felt it was THEIR brand. Supermarket retailers?? Whole other story because their buying systems had to be interrupted to get local products in the warehouse. Local independent markets were all over it.
It took two trips to the well with the voters, but we eventually succeeded in getting a $65 million bond issue passed to finance the development rights acquisition deal. Spellman, a Republican, got a lot of credit for this and voila, off to the Governor’s mansion, and me off to the agency business with Ogilvy & Mather in 1979.
I have never forgotten the great lesson of the moment, that a profound idea can be captured in an image and then used as a rallying platform to build business and secure fans. In this case, to benefit local farmers and eventually get voters behind an initiative that would keep the fresh cucumbers in those wonderful stalls at Seattle’s unique Pike Place Market.
So are apples, apples? Only if you let them be. Can a head of lettuce stoke emotional bonds? Incredibly, yes. Marketing and communication is such a powerful thing. It’s why I get up in the morning excited to jump into the fray.
Frito-Lay Blazes Authentic Story in Sustainability
By Robert Wheatley
Note: periodically we recognize great ideas and campaigns that transcend category conventions and challenge notions about successful ways to go to market. Our next candidate for Trailblazing strategy: Frito Lay SunChips brand.
Here’s a brand story that just keeps getting better the more carefully you look at it. A story that helps an existing business disrupt the go-to-market paradigm in its own category and in the process, we believe, create a unique point of advantage.
Frito-Lay learns that their best SunChip customers prefer the brand because it presents a healthier option. So far so good. They also learn their core consumers have an interest in what’s healthier for the planet, too. You can feel the green coming, but hold on, there’s some rich thinking alongside that helps elevate this to Trailblazer status.
Sustainability
Frito-lay pioneers a new packaging material that is 100% biodegradable. In 14 weeks the bag can go from snack carrier to compost. This new innovation is launched on Earth Day, taking advantage of the prevailing media attention on efforts to protect the planet.
The first thing we like about this is disruption. The SunChip brand has been around for a while. Besides flavor line extensions, it is what it is and has a following. So here comes fresh thinking and news for the brand that offers an array of extension possibilities. The compostable bag is precedent setting, right in tune with consumer sentiment and delivers a newfound emotional payoff when making a purchase.
Second the program builds what we call a ‘higher purpose’ or strategic mission underneath that adds a relate-able lifestyle connection to the brand relationship. Finally there’s also synergy with a new parallel messaging strategy Frito has launched in its product portfolio to convey the naturalness and simplicity of what’s in the bag from an ingredient standpoint.
This is summed up in a relevant tag line: Little Things Can Change The World. Healthier Planet. Healthier You.
Demonstration
But wait there’s more… Frito understands that street cred is important and actions speak so much louder than words. So to enhance credibility for the entire proposition and heap on top an on-going litany of leverage-able events to repeat the story, a partnership is created with National Geographic . The brand is co-sponsoring a “Green Effect†contest that will award $20,000 to each of five best ideas for creating green changes at the community level. This is visible demonstration or “walk the walk and talk the talk†kind of behavior. The program will undoubtedly create publicity extensions both online and off that drive awareness and interest for SunChips.
Oh, by the way, the plant in Arizona where SunChips are made – it operates on solar-generated, renewable fuels and recycled water. Brilliant.
As we continue to say, brands that matter do so because they offer greater meaning and value to their users. Bravo Frito-Lay.
Talking to consumers like a friend opens the dialogue
By Robert Wheatley
Seth Godin had a terrific post today. It begins with the premise that most marketing is aimed at recruiting new customers — thus the object of a brand’s obsession is very often going to be a stranger. He compares this to the paradigm of friendship where openness to an exchange of ideas is organic. Strangers are harder to talk to and convince of anything than a friend – whom you have motivation to listen to.
Let’s expand on this idea to describe a basis for effective brand communication strategy…
What are the characteristics of a good friendship? Perhaps mutual respect and affection are evident. When you interact with a friend you listen. Intently. You are patient. You care about their aspirations and concerns. You look for ways to be helpful. You give before you get. There’s a bond there that operates in parallel with some measure of compatibility – like-mindedness that serves to energize and put forward momentum into the relationship. Compatibility by the way usually arises from shared interests.
More often than not, business and marketing plans treat consumers as objects to sell to. The communication is built on a presumed clinical exchange – I make a great product and use my marketing plan to inoculate you with reasons why it is better than the other options, then you believe me and buy my stuff – and so the great cycle of consuming life continues. But now for the most part consumers have learned the tricks of the trade and remain systemically skeptical of push-style messages of self-proclaimed benefits, preferring mostly to ignore them.
So what are the fundamental underpinnings of effective communication in today’s wired and transparent world? How do you create the kind of communication that results in brand preference leading to a sale?
Talk and walk like a friend…
Sounds simple enough but to actually do this has tremendous implications for how you go to market, how you view the customer relationship in your operations and certainly in your communication – both content and channel.
Here’s the short form recipe for brand/consumer friendship:
To create and foment compatibility you must understand the personal interests and passions of your target consumer.
You need to identify ways your brand can help enable and facilitate those passions that can breed connective tissue between the consumer’s lifestyle and your brand – we call this finding your brand’s Higher Purpose.
Start a conversation. This has implications for use of social media platforms. It impacts the manner and tone of your messaging. It invites openness, feedback and discourse.
What about the experience the consumer has with your business and brand, is it friendly, is it fair and based on acknowledging the shared goals of a friendship?
There has to be genuine care for your consumer’s welfare – you can’t fake it. You give to get. Reciprocity is at the core of how a brand earns a place in the consumer’s life.
Stop operating like a stranger…
If you play this right you can build a life-long bond, as long as you remain true to the principles and routinely check to see if your operations and plans deliver on the “friend†model. What’s the benefit of all this? TRUST. And trust leads to preference and sales. So we implore you, stop treating consumers like balance sheet entries to sell to. Once trust is established both sides are paying attention and your marketing communications will be welcomed like a chat with someone you know.
When marketers work to identify a higher purpose and thereby imbue their brand with greater meaning, a whole new world of opportunity unfolds to develop that ever-elusive relationship with consumers. The challenge: finding the sweet spot of relevance to the lifestyle concerns and passions of your best customers. Here’s an example of great thinking at work from our friends at General Mills.
My three and six-year old daughters like books. Every night the ritual at bedside involves two or three titles told with great flourish by my wife, Kristen or me. We routinely replenish the bookrack with new titles, given their daily appetite for stories. Equally we feel this is a good thing as parents to do and remain hopeful the devotion to reading will create a life-long interest in books.
Please note the importance of the children’s welfare to parents and doing things actively to support their development!!
Cheerios. Yes its cereal, and also finger food for the very young. Both daughters eat it dry as a snack. So Cheerios is in the consideration set for our kids. The goal of General Mills is to sell me more Cheerios, more often and over a longer period of time. Sure Cheerios can re-fresh their proposition with flavor and form line extensions. But this happens quite a lot in food land so while we take note of it, this is not working to dial up our general attitude towards the brand.
But wait!!!
Cheerios launches a contest to search out and identify new potential authors for children’s titles via a literacy program called “Spoonfuls of Stories.†Further the brand distributes 35 million paperback editions of selected books inside cereal boxes. Enter the parallel cause related layer – Cheerios to date has also donated $3 million to a nonprofit called First Book that provides books to low-income families.
Cheerios now intersects with my behavior as a parent to read to my kids on a daily basis. This act is important to me. The brand’s behavior aligns with mine in an area quite separate from diet but resting squarely in the zone of relevance. Now we have something powerful that ties the brand relationship together.
This is precisely what we mean by “higher purpose.†Engagement and the opportunity for a relationship must begin with the consumer granting permission. And this access is an outcome of brands that enable and support the keen aspirations of their users. This takes the brand relationship past commerce and into dialogue. Telling me about the natural ingredients in a cereal is one thing, but helping me with a key-parenting goal is entirely another. This is the intent of our own proprietary Trailblazer planning model – to uncover insights that help brands rise above “selling†and into mattering.
It’s spring break and we ventured down to Puerto Vallarta for some R&R with the kids. The flight was full but not packed. The lines long at Customs but not too long. The restaurants in PV have business but there are a few empty tables. The beach areas are busy but not over-crowded.
We’re staying in a beautiful condominium nestled on a quiet sandy cove in the Conchas Chinas area. A close friend of ours developed the site and building. He is currently trying to sell the six units. Five star views, sandy beach, infinity pool, stone floors and counters, Viking kitchen and impeccably furnished. Yesterday they sold the unit we are in at a substantial discount to asking price with warnings from the agent that the market is tough — and getting tougher so a new offer might not appear for a very ling time. The deal is done amid an undercurrent of concern about sitting for months on the just-finished product. The mood about the sale is subdued.
In the market areas away from the tourist center people go about their day selling their wares, fruits and seafood. In their eyes you can see the lingering questions about their own welfare. But their overhead is low – the distance between life’s simple pleasures and the hard obligations of managing your bills isn’t too great. Sort of like when a child learns to ski and the inevitable crashes aren’t such a big deal because the distance between standing up and falling down is less than a yardstick.
So the weather in PV is still 82 degrees each day. Perfect. And the palm trees are no shorter. But you can tell the issues for people in every walk of life are real and compelling. The paralysis is partly supported by the facts of submerged 401ks and declining home values, tight credit and other asset-reducing conditions. The other half is fueled by the hall talk and informal conversation that helps supply the fear and anxiety of what may or may not lie around the corner.
It is human nature to reign in, pull up the drawbridge and head to the root cellar hoping the bad news above will pass over us without much effect. I ask this: are we any less creative or innovative than we were a year ago? Has there been a collective draw down on brainpower that has sapped the ability to invent, lead, manage and build our businesses? Is the central move to add-value and compelling benefit that lies at the core of most entrepreneurial success stories somehow vaporized in the face of bad economic publicity?
No.
Instead I believe we collectively feel a bit chastened by the revelations that perhaps our consumption habits were a tad unbridled in the days of escalating home values, equity loans, cash outs, easy credit and other assorted sources of wealth we could and did tap into.
But for the most part I also think most of us did not run around like drunken sailors running up credit limits for sport. Many of us bought real estate, made investments, fixed up our homes and invested in our children’s futures. So with limited apologies for the occasional indiscretion most of us should be able to sleep easily at night.
It’s time now to refocus our energies and attention on the never-ending business of value creation. The engine that drives the economy, mostly from consumer spending, is an outcome of remarkable, interesting, useful, beautifully designed and delivered products and services that improve our lives and loves. So lets get to it. We’ve done it before. Now is not the time to reign in and wait out the storm above. Now is the time to fire up the engines of invention and work like crazy to improve lifestyles and reignite the passions of both want and need that come from our in-grained ability to recognize and invest in a great idea when we see one.
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