Economy turns attention to other values…

By Robert Wheatley

We have a weekend place in southwest Michigan, about 90 miles from downtown Chicago. It sits in an apple orchard with a small lake in the middle. Above is the view from the end of my dock. It’s serene. Quiet. Every form of wildlife abounds. Eagle, deer, wild turkeys and fox roam the area. The family loves it. We’re spending more down time there these days… It is in some ways a metaphor for how the marketing world is evolving.

In the era of conspicuous consumption people get caught up in things – buying them. They become badges and definers of personal outlook, status and self-image. Consumers morph over time into a form of professional acquirer – homo-shopperoticus — who reaps emotional rewards from adding to the ever-growing stable of goods and services.

You worked hard to play hard, or so the theory goes. The system fed itself and many continued merrily down the path of leveraged prosperity. Then came the crash and things changed – out of necessity the economic collapse forced a reevaluation of what matters. People recognized once again the importance of relationships, families and time together. Our homes have reemerged as havens in the storm. The retrenching on expensive vacations has ushered in an era more about shared family activities than bold-faced travel exotica.

Here is the Michigan house. On weekends inside you’ll find our family playing games together. Talking. Cooking. Reading. Entertaining friends. When the weather cooperates we’re outside rowing on the lake, walking on trails that surround the property. Heading to our neighbors. We’re in a rural area surrounded by farms and vineyards. So small town community celebrations become low-key additions to the entertainment line-up.

Interesting that divorces are on the down stroke now, fueled perhaps by budget realities that make financing separate households less feasible. In the adult beverage business, off-premise distribution (supermarkets, liquor stores) is gaining momentum while on-premise (bars and clubs) slows a bit. People currently consume at social occasions with friends in the home more so than out on the town. Cookbook sales are skyrocketing. Hmmmm?

In the midst of fiscal chaos people look for calm, security, certainty, substance and as a result place more value on tradition and meaning. Brands that recognize this sea-change have an extraordinary opportunity to connect in a new and powerful way with consumers.

Can you facilitate and enable family events and interactions? What language are you using in your messaging strategies? Does it tap into the reservoir of desire for substance, human interaction, authenticity and shared experience? Can you play a role in family traditions? Facilitate communication? People are more grounded now in the understanding that human relationships are an impressive emotional anchor.

Brand relevance is a curious thing because it is so directly tied to acute understanding and insight into the consumer’s needs, wants and passions. As for me I place great priority on my daughters. Brynne (who is about to turn three) and I enjoy some quality time together while having breakfast on the deck. She helped me “cook.” This is where the action is.

Brands that matter do so by acquiring a higher purpose, one built on recognizing people have an intense desire to be a part of something larger than themselves. This is the path to a brand related bond. Now is the time to mine communications pathways that acknowledge and build on this emotional tether.

What do you think?

Never underestimate the need for equity-building efforts

By Robert Wheatley

I love my car. It’s a 2003 Mercedes G 500. If you’ve seen one it’s a retro looking angular box on wheels. Mercedes version of a Hummer-esque off roader gussied up with amenities (best auto sound system I’ve ever had). It’s a truck and drives like one but I really enjoy it. In my advanced age I prefer using Kiehl’s skin care products because they work and I like the story behind the brand. At the end of a rough day (I have plenty of those) I re-orient with a cold Corona beer (yes they’re a client but I liked the product before hand). The vacation-in-a-bottle beach thing is a mental aspiration.

As a passionate home cook I have standards about what I will use. It’s Barilla pasta or I’m not making the recipe. If you put a bag of Cheetos in front of me, it’s gone. Same with Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds – can’t live without ‘em. My dentist was forever lecturing me about my teeth. He persuaded me to get a Sonic Care toothbrush. Wow, what a difference in the check-ups. I’m sold. I’m a pet fanatic, and have been my entire life. And I’m brand loyal — I have a Newfoundland dog, here he is.

His name is Goliath – appropriate don’t you think, given he weighs 170 pounds? I have been a Newf fan for 15 years. Best dog breed on the planet. I could talk for hours about them. My soup is Campbell’s, and my tissue is Kleenex . My computer is an Apple and I’ve been a diehard for over 20 years. Honestly the Apple reflects my non-conforming outlook on life and career devotion to a creative business. I appreciate design esthetics so Apple gets major props for that.

Sure the economy has created trade-offs for my family and me. We do less of some things like travel. We’ve cut way back on home improvements. We’re not replacing things that are getting a little shop worn. But brands that matter still do and they’re not falling off the menu. Why? Because so much of how we define ourselves is expressed in our likes and interests, and brands play a real big role there.

A recent Harris Interactive Equi-Trend study suggests that in the current economic hurricane, as Warren Buffet describes it, we tighten our grip around brands we enjoy. Marketing Daily ran a piece about the study. Says Harris: “Brand equity does not lose potency when money is tight.” Interestingly comfort foods and staples got the highest brand equity scores – Hershey’s, Crayola, even Arm & Hammer baking soda. In categories like airlines, Southwest got high marks. It was Sony in electronics and Grey Goose in spirits.

The prevailing view is that brand loyalty goes out the window with the budget bath water in a recession. NOT SO. It is entirely conditional. Loyalty’s core essence is grounded in value to the user. Wes brown, an analyst with Iceology in LA says people tend to stick with what they know and while a cheaper alternative may exist, they are hesitant to risk failure from something they don’t know as well.

So for any organization considering cutbacks and diminished investments in brand building, think twice. And for those who in a state of panic reach for steep price reductions, be careful lest you dilute your equity. Remember that people love their brands and investments in building those relationships are not playing fast and loose with available assets. If anything its vital to your future. Brands that plow ahead in the storm, by far and away, come out healthier than their conservative brethren.

I’m “gripping,” are you? What do you think?

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.

General Mills Mines Relevance

By Robert Wheatley

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.

Bravo Cheerios….

By Robert Wheatley

Can happiness build a better brand?

Granted it feels a little wishful and maybe even goofy to say happiness can be linked to business success, but hang in with me, and you’ll see how this pays out.

You have to love the story of Zappos. In less than a decade it’s gone from idea to around $1 billion in sales. Not bad. You’ve probably encountered the hall-talk and legend of extraordinary customer service and devotion to culture which grounds most word-of-mouth about this Internet e-tailer.

After browsing through some of the Tweets at Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh’s Twitter page, I discovered a link to a podcast from a recent presentation he made at a conference in Austin, Texas. It’s worth a listen. The talk goes on for a while… it remains engaging due in part to Tony’s affable, informal story-telling style. And helpful because of the insight he conveys around the “magic” ingredients that have helped propel Zappos from shoe seller to multi-category storefront.

His presentation hits a crescendo near the end when he moves beyond storytelling to advising, translating the powerful Zappos experience into some specific and focused direction that can benefit other businesses and brands. So here it is without further set-up:

Happiness

That’s right. Businesses and brands can find a path to success through a happiness strategy. Hang with me here before you conclude this is going to be psychobabble. The infrastructure that supports extraordinary service at Zappos, the investments made there to enhance the service experience and outcomes involves clear dollar and cents decisions and allocation of assets.

But underneath you can see the point emerge: it is their single-minded focus on culture and hiring the right people to fit within that world, that helps create traction with consumers. In relating this success to other businesses, Hsieh says that in the end happiness lies at the core of engagement, brand building, and business success. In customer interactions, employee attitude, longevity, turnover and, the feelings consumers have towards his brand.

He confesses to having studied happiness carefully and the triggers that bring it to life. Not surprisingly he relays that research studies consistently confirm that happiness sought-after and thought to flow through better jobs, relationships and money prove fleeting. In the end, it turns out human beings have a structural need to be a part of something larger than themselves.

Bingo: The Higher Purpose

As if he had been quoting chapter and verse out of the Wheatley & Timmons belief system about brand development, he talks about the compelling need for businesses and individuals to define a mission and higher purpose that transcends the daily balance sheet concerns of commerce.

Brand relevance springs from forging connections to a consumer’s lifestyle aspirations, desires and wants. What kind of vision, community and purpose can we craft for our brands that achieves higher purpose, meaning and therefore systemically delivers the recipe for happiness with those we wish to sell to (happy = satisfied = loyal = potential heavy user = brand ambassador)?

We all crave happiness as human beings. It is a fundamental driver in our lives. The notion of higher purpose and mission is linked to this sense and certainly fits strategically with how brands can earn a valued place in the lives of their best users. Hsieh says he’s been able to move the path in his organization for employees from job to career and then on to calling. And within the concept of calling he’s unlocked a reservoir of happiness internally that translates externally into the grist that authenticates the stories of incredible service experience.

For brands, a higher purpose becomes an enabler of relationship with core users. The unselfish acts of a brand that are intended to help facilitate lifestyle passions is a powerful vehicle to differentiate and elevate the entire strategic conversation about go-to-market strategy. Appropriate we think in the age of consumer control. Makes me happy.

What do you think?

By Robert Wheatley

Word of mouth begins with those inclined to recommend

Are you talking to the influencers who can drive business in your category? Especially the message multipliers who can be enlisted as brand ambassadors and are useful in driving trial of new products and services? Are you purposefully targeting those who sway others, or really just attempting to carpet bomb enough consumers with your messaging in the hopes that no one will escape the barrage?

The effectiveness of your spending can be multiplied ten-fold if you make an effort to better understand the role of influence and how to reach those who in turn reach others. You may agree that word of mouth retains the highest degree of credibility for consumers about what products to buy, so the question remains, are you going after those at the headwaters of WOM?

Just who are they?

In marketing communications there are two paths to follow: the shotgun model that recommends broad-based communication across multiple platforms intended to engage a wide audience. And then the rifle shot, aimed more precisely at a smaller audience of engaged individuals and influencers capable of becoming ambassadors and advocates for brand messaging.

In order for listeners to listen, they must be open to the medium and the message. And in today’s environment of ultimate consumer control over the timing, method and outcomes of engagement, there’s simply no place for messaging that is “pushed at” audiences who are not paying attention. The question we’re considering here: Can we harness the power of influential consumers to multiply the impact of our outreach campaigns?

Yes.

According to WOM research firm Keller Fay Group, there are 30 million people in the US alone who are measurably more likely than average to 1) seek out information; 2) share ideas; and 3) make recommendations to others. Certainly the anything-you-want-to-know-anytime aspects of the Internet has democratized access to information, but not everyone is built to influence and lead.

Those who fit this description, according to Keller Fay are:

Three times as likely as the rest of the population to spread word of mouth

Engage in social networks that are almost twice as large as those of other people

Are active seekers of information from an array of sources to supply their need to know

By Robert Wheatley

Web is the ideal environment for PR tactics

In a recent post we talked about the erosion of influence for mainstream newspapers amidst the surge in popularity of online sources of news for both younger and older consumers. We are witnessing an evolution that is gaining momentum in media platforms and news consumption. And technology may sooner-than-later usher in he next big shift: A new era where online and television merge creating a content universe that is instant, global, visual, entertaining, interactive, selective, customizable, educational and transactional.

Because media currently exist as separate and unique silos — TV from print, radio to online and so forth – editorial media placement strategies are aligned with the characteristics and needs of each channel. Although there is certainly cross-pollination between the Internet and other mediums, there is still division of platforms. As they combine, what are the implications for brand PR outreach and editorial media placement tactics? Gone will be the physical limitations of deadlines, for example, associated with when newspapers go to press or TV news goes on air in its time slot. The news cycle will be (it is already for the most part) immediate, pervasive and 24/7. The shelf life of stories has moved from a few days to unlimited because what goes on the Internet exists forever in accessible archives.

Implications to PR strategy

Splintering of media targets from hundreds to thousands of content and audience relevant locations and channels will require new approaches to outreach. Therefore, skill sets to direct and shepherd the flow of news and information will adjust. Processes used to distribute news must evolve. Tone and character of copy and how stories are cast is already expanding to accommodate conversational channels like blogs and social media platforms.

Direct Delivery

The Web beckons a vast publishing platform that allows brands and business to convey messaging not only through third parties but directly, too. And while it may be tempting to “ad-ify” these vehicles and simply move paid forms to digital distribution, the consumer attitude towards this kind of communication has changed, too. Today’s protocol for engagement is centered on education, information and entertainment that aren’t wearing “buy me” on its sleeve. Help me first then earn my attention; understand my interests and help facilitate my passions to secure my allegiance — this is now the price of entry into a two-way conversation between brands and users.

Witness the change unfolding today in politics as President Obama ushers in the first Presidency founded on direct continuous interaction, feedback and communication with constituents – thus enabling him to by-pass all filters (including the press) and push his agenda one-on-one in the voting districts of every publicly elected Federal office holder in all 50 states.

The New Media World…

Assessment – We can know instantly who is listening and secure feedback in real time.

Conversation – This is happening whether brands choose to participate or not. Better to get involved than sit on the sidelines.

Response – Knowledge is power and we’re able to respond to what we learn with incredible quickness. Conversely stories are moving at the speed of light. Misinformation that goes unchallenged can steamroll into reputation problems that take root in hours not days.

Content Creation — Hunger for the authentic is all around us. Consumers demand honesty and transparency. This has to be factored into brand messaging strategies, the channels of communication that are used and how communication is served up.

By Robert Wheatley

Powerful tools to build brand value and relevance

Today the Wall Street Journal features a story about a new ad campaign from General Mills for their iconic Pillsbury brand. You can watch below.

What’s obvious to the viewer: this spot is less ad-like and more about story telling. The approach is appropriate in an environment where consumers remain skeptical and disinterested in overt pitches and interruptive selling. This spot is anything but.
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By Robert Wheatley

Fractured trust upends power of communications

Perhaps at no other time in the history of modern marketing have we been faced with such an incredible accumulation of contiguous scandals, recalls, startling revelations, bankruptcies, forced marriages, mistruths, half-truths, malfeasance, behavioral inconsistencies and general evidence of bad business behavior.

From miscreant members of the Clergy to chemical leaching plastic water bottles, lead-covered toys, and fallen sports legends, consumers have been bombarded with evidence that leaders, corporations, brands, institutions and communications cannot be trusted. People are learning rapidly that corporate messaging is suspect at best as buoyant reports of happy trails ahead may be masking an impending fall from grace. We discover even the most storied of conservative business icons in banking and insurance can fall under the spell of temptation to play fast and loose. Awesome out-sized basketfuls of assets are gambled away through investments in flimsy financial products constructed on a floor of actuarial quicksand.
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Working Differently To Build A Brand That Matters…

Take note, we emphasize the word revolution as closer to the events occurring in marketing strategy, more so than evolution. There’s no time anymore for incremental-ism — toe dipping in the new strategy pool. Rather, it’s time now to immerse yourself in an entirely new go-to-market platform. One that is built on a foundation of relevance and Read More»