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.

What do you think?

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.

What do you think?

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.

What do you think?

By Robert Wheatley

There’s not a moment to lose. Your brand, your budget and outcomes are at stake. The world of communications has changed, and your PR strategy and tactics must evolve with it. Or be prepared for little to no bottom line benefits from your spend.

Why does this matter? Being in the presence of a message (PR driven or otherwise) does not mean any useful interaction has actually taken place. Your goal is to impact consumer behavior. But there’s a vast difference between communications that is built correctly to accomplish that vs. messages “out there” in media that perpetually circle the engagement airport — never quite landing.

Here are the key questions you should be asking yourself right now…

1. How does the PR strategy connect and align our brand in a relevant and meaningful way with the lifestyle interests and passions of our core customers?

Relevance is key to securing engagement — so consumer insight and understanding is a precursor to building effective communications. There must be clear and specific linkage between PR programs and the consumer’s self interests that position the brand as an enabler, supporter, educator and facilitator of your consumer’s lifestyle passions. Otherwise she’s not going to pay any attention to what you put out there.

2. What proportion of your budget is dedicated to Web-based communication vs. mainstream media?

We have ample evidence that word of mouth drives business results. And now we know that Internet based communication is increasingly the genesis of influence, conversation and discussion about businesses and brands. Yet old habits (always hard to break) push spending and programming frequently down the well-worn path of conventional print and broadcast media. It’s not that these channels don’t matter, they do. But the poor red headed stepchild in many cases is the very media channel that can activate conversation and buzz. So is it time to re-configure the proportional spending to place more assets in web-based media channels? Yes.

3. Social media may no longer be a tertiary place to participate, but are you creating scale underneath your social media strategy?

Unlike any other media property that has come before it, the unique characteristic of social platforms is quite simple: they ALL begin with an audience of zero. It is your content strategy that can help aggregate an audience over time. How well you do this will impact the overall value and benefit of social media investments. Achieving scale is a combination of building and distributing useful, entertaining and valuable multi-media content (read video) along with special offers and benefits – and then integrating social media through every consumer touch point in your marketing communications toolbox.

4. To what extent are you now investing in creating media that fuels the budding relationship with your core users and brand fans?

“Owned Media” is now the third “core” leg of the media communications stool alongside earned and paid. Brands are now publishers and content producers themselves. The Internet has enabled cost-effective distribution. However PR campaigns have historically been built around enticing and convincing third-party editors and gatekeepers to do a story (earned media). And coverage certainly comes imbued with the associative value and credibility from implied third-party endorsement. Equally important however, brands can now talk directly to consumers through custom editorial content thus assuring the message remains unaltered or diluted. Have you launched your video channel yet?

5. Look before you leap. To what extent have you refined your listening tools to be sure you understand what consumer’s are saying to each other about your business?

Pushing messages at people doesn’t work any longer. Relevance is king. And part of the equation is honing your listening investments to be sure you fully understand the conversation that’s taking place around you. There are online-based tools both quantitative and qualitative that serve this purpose. A full suite of listening platforms should be “always on” with analysis following closely behind to assure you’re aware of what’s being said, by whom and where. You can’t effectively engage without this knowledge.

These five areas are vital to effective PR strategy and tactics, tied to your ability to impact behavior. They act synergistically to make communication effective. In the absence of these tools and approaches, you’re resting outcomes more on hope — and hope is never a strategy.

What do you think?

Budgets lag to invest in influence building

By Robert Wheatley

This may not be surprising: A recent study published by Yahoo confirms the Internet is growing significantly as a source of influence for word-of-mouth conversations about brands.

According to the research, 38% of consumers, or 78 million people, have brand-related word of mouth conversations – both on line and off-line – that are influenced by content on the Internet. While most word of mouth conversations occur face to face, the Internet is increasingly important as a driver for those engagements.

That said, budgets and spending continue to show a disproportionate share aimed at communications through mainstream platforms in print and broadcast channels. While many in the marketing communications and PR world will admit they believe talking “at” consumers doesn’t work, and may also agree the most powerful form of communication out there is word of mouth, still spending aimed at cultivating influence on the Web is trailing.

So it goes without saying more assets should be shifted to managing online influence and reputation.

Of course this also puts more pressure on measuring the ROI. Yet social media is a different animal. It’s not about output and broadcasting messages. It is about listening, interacting and engaging on topics relevant to the consumer’s life. Does it work? Take a look at the video by Eric Qualman below:

What do you think?

Connections to key lifestyle interests invoke openness to engagement

By Robert Wheatley

“The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” — George Bernard Shaw

Business growth opportunities abound for brands that fully understand the conditions and events that set in motion openness to communication – as in “I’m listening.” Much of the time consumers are not. The presence of brand communication at any given moment is not nearly as important as the audience’s willingness to pay attention. That may feel a bit like saying water is wet. But hear us out: lifestyle interests and events drive the readiness to listen. There’s an optimal time and place when consumers will be primed to engage.

Our point: brand communication gains a whole lot more traction when it occurs in tandem with relevant consumer behavior than it does randomly. Yet all too often, brand outreach is showered broadly as a form of messaging rain, timed to coincide with retail distribution or promotion period considerations more so than consumer lifestyle connection. In effect, brands remain ever hopeful that consumers will simply collide with the message storm or will be magically lured into engagement through its ubiquity, entertainment value or sheer novelty.

Lifestyle events prime the pump of openness…

Brand communication and PR strategies anchored to a foundation of real insight about the consumer’s relevant lifestyle concerns and passions will help crack open the door to hyper-targeted communication that conveys the right thing at the right time to the right person.

Getting Alignment With Target Audience Interests

Here’s a living example — Nesties – as defined by market research firm OTX and on-line retailer The Knot – are a unique segment of 25 to 32 year old female consumers. They represent the low hanging fruit for an array of household and lifestyle products. When these women become engaged to be married it triggers a period of three to five years devoted to wedding planning, new household creation and starting a family. These events in turn motivate an array of purchases.

It is the events and changing conditions in their lives that activate a behavioral response. Collectively Nesties are long-range “planners” who feel they have primary responsibility in setting up their new households and take responsibility for decorating, cooking, social activities, household chores, caring for children and pets.

This group shows evidence of predictable purchase behavior. And offers brands an audience already receptive to establishing a relationship that could continue beyond these formative years. So investments should be made in carefully crafted dialogue focused on this unique tribe — and grounded in positioning the brand as helpful and involved with her changing lifestyle needs, concerns and aspirations. This will lead to business growth.

Finding The Optimal Moment

Strategic timing and location of communication can also yield added engagement value. Meaning if it occurs when a person is actively doing something germane. A simple example of this is what we call leveraging a food brand’s kitchen footprint or in effect building its “share-of-countertop.” There is increased receptivity to brand messaging when the delivery timing coincides with related consumer’s behavior – in this case when working in the kitchen space. An obvious starter is to provide useful meal ideas, entertaining suggestions, tabletop recommendations, recipe preparation hints and serving suggestion guidance. It is an optimal environment for having a conversation — because the consumer is naturally open to it and their brain is switched on to the subject matter.

Nailing The Best Message

Messaging gains power when it is configured around the consumer’s lifestyle interests. Finding this sweet spot of alignment is what we call identifying a brand’s Higher Purpose. When the brand positions itself as an enabler, facilitator and supporter of a consumer’s personal passion, you’re able to forge powerful outreach tactics from this base. Consider the strategic possibilities that could fall out of sharpening your focus on consumer groups devoted to specific lifestyle interests such as fashion, travel, music, art, pet care, food enjoyment, cooking, child rearing, fitness, sports, home decorating or improvement, self-improvement, gardening, outdoor recreation, entertainment, entertaining, relationships and socializing. We could go on. The point is: the days of the hard sell, transactional style relationship are over and that form of messaging is out the window with it. So you want the consumer to understand some of the unique functional benefits in your product. Ok. And the path to getting their ears switched on springs from your willingness to be generous and unselfish — and thus play a role in their passions. It’s a richer, deeper and more personal relationship you want to construct.

The end result will be increased brand relevance, preference and sales.

Brands are fast becoming media publishers and producers

By Robert Wheatley

Is your brand ready to be its own TV channel? Magazine publisher? Is there a Chief Editorial Officer position looming on the horizon inside your organization? The answer could be yes.

We have entered the era of content marketing. Inbound rather than outbound communication strategies that serve to build Web traffic, remove barriers to purchase, activate brand ambassadors and support community building – all with a shelf life that has remarkable staying power. This shift will inevitably require optimization of brand communications strategies between the three primary platforms of Owned, Earned and Paid media. Of these, more and more momentum is surfacing around Owned Media. Here we discuss its role and value in the marketing mix.

What does your Owned Media plan look like?

We’re on a fast track now to define best practices in content creation for various forms of brand created media — videos, Webcasts, podcasts, blogs, e-zines, e-books and presentations. Not long ago brands worked with their PR counsel primarily to get product massages telegraphed through various editorial channels. While the world of “earned media” will continue to be a relevant and important mode of outreach — albeit along a refined path that assigns increasing priority to bloggers — ”owned media” is rapidly emerging as an important foundation vehicle for acquiring, building and retaining customer relationships. Now is the time to construct your own editorial and programming calendars that chart topics and story telling in a frame your audience will find useful in their daily lives.

Owned Media helps build trust, familiarity and mutual respect…

At the recent Pet Food Forum in Chicago, a conference of leading pet food brands and their minders, I presented the case for brand building that follows a new trail built around identifying a brand’s Higher Purpose – an effort to drive relevancy by aligning the brand value proposition closely with consumer (in this case pet parent) lifestyle needs and passions. Part of the presentation was dedicated to the over-arching requirement for trust-creation and how important social media will be to install the building blocks of confidence, familiarity, respect and comfort that must exist between brand and consumer. Interestingly the entire Higher Purpose proposition seeds and cultivates fertile ground for ongoing content creation that is by definition more meaningful to consumers – because its designed around their needs, interests and concerns.

Equally important, engaging content lies at the base of aggregating an audience in social media platforms. If you do this skillfully, brands earn permission for a relationship. And that includes becoming a resource for news, information, entertainment and education.

Essentially we’re talking about how you can exponentially increase your brand’s worth and engagement value by delivering content that is instructive and helpful to those trying to make decisions about what products to buy.

Says social media expert and author Brian Solis:

“Our road to the future begins with understanding that attention is finite and is increasingly thinning. It is now our responsibility to connect purpose and value directly with individuals where, when, and how their attention is focused. We must help ourselves by introducing relevance, discoverability, and share-ability into the mix. Empowering consumers to view the most material information and in turn, make advantageous decisions is now a critical priority and will determine our stature not only in online societies, but also in the markets where we hope to thrive and excel. We are either part of the information gathering and decision-making cycles or we are absent from them. Where we rank once connected is established by our understanding of people and the information they seek combined with our mastery of the networks, tools, and services they use to communicate. And, through the creation of compelling media, we earn the presence, awareness and ultimately the influence we deserve.”

A great example of this at work is Whole Foods and their Secret Ingredient video blog that is aimed at helping home cooks learn new recipes, cooking techniques, ingredient pairings and other useful advice. It sits in the middle of a growing catalog of video material that spans the waterfront of visits to a dairy farm or other tutorials that surround the increasingly popular topic of “where your food comes from.” It informs, entertains, rewards while burnishing the brand as a knowledge broker on subjects their shoppers care about.

Taking responsibility for consumer interaction…

In a way, owned media offers brands a plausible shot to take responsibility for engineering consumer engagement in communications. Ads can be ignored. PR, while intrusive, still requires that messaging pass through an independent filter – one that will certainly be credible. But in the end may not fully expose the audience to all of the relevant information. Editing is editing.

“Content focused on selling rather than helping is doomed.” Jay Baer, Convince & Convert

Thus Owned Media allows brands to create and build communication that is delivered in tact to consumers. Of course this creates enormous pressure on relevancy and unselfishness — you cannot do this well if your primary motivation is simply to thrust a selling message in front of someone. This never works. But with a proper nod to relevance, value and sensitivity the door is wide open to put enriched multi-media content squarely in the mix of social media engagement.

We live in exciting times. The PR business has now acquired an added role to combine and synthesize editorial outreach with content creation. The end result is a rich treasure trove of meaningful communication that can hit consumer lifestyle interests squarely on the nose – assuming, of course, that you know what those interests are.

Just think of the possibilities for brand to live in a place that matters and has meaning to the lives of those they wish to sell to –

• Cooking tips for the passionate kitchen commander

• Destination hints and experiences for the inveterate traveler

• Style immersions for the creative fashionistas

• Parenting advice for the focused purposeful mom

• Edgy ideas for the budding home decorator

• Shared stories of adventure for the outdoor enthusiast

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May 13, 2010