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?

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

Moms seek advice from “live” sources…

By Robert Wheatley

With all the conversation about engagement with social media one would assume that online discussions about products and services lead the way as purchase decision drivers. Sure they remain important and vital because moms look to social platforms for advice, support and connection.

That said, when it comes to making purchases, offline networks of friends and family trump all other sources for advice on what to buy, according to a recent study released by MomConnection and The Parenting Group’s 5,000 member mom panel. Even though the study data confirms 60% of moms are using social networks in their daily routine, they are four times more likely to look to their off-line network for info on which products to buy.

As indicated before in a recent article we published, validation is essential for consumers to confirm assertions made by brands about the outcomes of product use and experience.

Communications increasingly is a circular proposition where touch point consistency matters and outside third party connections loom large as sources that bring high levels of built-in belief cachet. It is the belief thing that brands find hardest to “manage” because trust comes not only from brand relationships well done, but importantly, from sources outside a brand’s control wheelhouse.

So how do you influence the circle when elements of the belief system most important to moms lie not with brand outreach but with their friends and family?

Creating the tell-able tale…

It helps of course when products and services are unique and interesting enough to come already equipped with natural charm, allure and magnetism. But even with the most magnetic of brand personalities, marketers need to think through the story telling opportunity and ask these questions:

• Is my message sticky and repeat-able?

• Is it thus short and memorable?

• Are there good story telling elements wound in to keep it interesting?

• Can the “keeper of the story” come across as insightful and knowledgeable to her circle of friends?

• Does the story contain nuggets of intrinsic value to the consumer that is relevant to their own lifestyle needs and interests?

Simply said, can I craft a tell-able tale around my brand and product story, one that can be easily passed around to others?

Moms drive much of commerce so this is an important discussion to have. It’s about looking candidly at this potential disconnect in the communications landscape. If I want my brand story to be passed along from mom to mom, is it truly designed to accommodate this requirement?

Complicated messages die-hard anyway, so passing communications through the crucible of simplicity is a good thing no matter what. But designing messages specifically to enhance their pass around value is yet a new technique that requires extra effort to get right.

Here are the most popular subject topics for mom-to-mom conversations on product choices:

Children’s toys and games 86%

Entertainment 84%

Cooking and baking tools 82%

Online/offline shopping 78%

Drugs and remedies 75%

What do you think?

What is the secret of today’s creative leap?

By Robert Wheatley

One of the most endearing qualities of AMC’s Mad 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.

What do you think?

Are you ready to rock in digital age?

By Robert Wheatley

With the public relations media strategy game in a state of transition, we expose the new media communications paradigm here. It’s time to consider new techniques and approaches as we examine how editorial media outreach now mingles with direct consumer communication.

Before Social Media (BSM)

Forever and a day, PR media activity has essentially been a “business-to-media” proposition. Whatever the material developed to showcase brand and business messaging, the end game was always to entice, cajole and convince media decision makers to use said material and sources (spokespeople) for a story.

Not unlike two-step distribution in the beverage alcohol business – beer maker to distributor to retailer – the PR chain previously originated with media gatekeepers who in turn re-purposed the material we create in their “media-to-consumer” role. This effectively left the message maker one step back from the final outcome. Message credibility? Yes. Direct input on the final story line? No.

After Social Media (ASM)

Now the audiences for news consumption have exploded to include business-to-consumer, business-to-investor, business-to-employees, and other assorted stakeholders. So the digital media revolution puts brands and businesses on a path to converse not only with editors and citizen journalists — but also directly with the end consumer. Thus bypassing the media gatekeeper and enabling face-to-face interaction with those you’re attempting to reach. Some will say this has always been true and in terms of outcome it is. But the mechanics of what went on in the “BSM” process has been squarely within a business-to-media pathway.

Digital Evolution

Valeria Maltoni, author of Conversation Agent blog is a thought leader on this subject and has contributed much to the conversation about evolving media strategy. As you tear into the implications for how news and information is assembled and distributed, Valeria has a wonderful discussion on the subject of Social Media Releases and how this impacts PR.

A Fictional Pet Food Launch

You can immediately see how the tools that are assembled for a new brand or product launch are shifting gears. Let’s use the introduction of a new pet food diet as a hypothetical example.

Say we’re launching a new seasonal fresh ingredient pet food line from a company we’ll call Natural Bounty Pet Foods. It’s a super-premium food and the brand is aimed at pet parents who see their animals as family members and dote over them. They care, they’re engaged and they’re informed. They want to know what’s in the food they feed Fido and who is behind the brand and its formulation. Credibility is an issue – so confidence in the diet looms large.

Media Message and Story Packaging

In the BSM era publicity efforts in both mainstream and digital media channels would have coalesced around a press kit and some streaming video, distributed online and used as a foundation for contacts with editors, bloggers and producers.

In the ASM world new technology allows content rich micro-site-like platforms to be created and distributed that go much, much further. While the inverted pyramid approach to copywriting may endure (because it’s THE key to good, compelling writing) the style today gets more conversational in tone. Why? Because journalists AND pet parents, employees and other stakeholders are gong to consume the content.

Essentially, for Natural Bounty we’re constructing a digital, interactive repository of information in various forms that ladders up to an immersive experience — and deep dive into the product, its development, experts behind the formulation, how it fits in the framework of innovation pet diets, plus the emotional stories of pets who’ve benefitted from eating it. What’s more, the platform is distributed not only among mainstream media but also in social media channels as well.

We could go on about Natural Bounty launch events, interactive tactics and other strategies to build awareness and preference. But the point here is simply to say there’s strategic, tactical and infrastructure changes in motion right now for PR firms and clients in how and what information is created and packaged for distribution — to inform those who will learn and buy and virally share the message with others.

The story-telling possibilities are made richer by the technology. That it can be aggregated in one location and made available to various channels of on and off-line media and other relevant audiences adjusts the equation of message content and timing. Digital media platforms may indeed inform the future of PR because of the convenience, efficiency and effectiveness they intrinsically deliver. The multi-media options – embedded video, podcasts, links — strengthen message horsepower and bring more dimensions to the story. The built-in interactivity drives real-time feedback as the Natural Bounty launch progresses. Awesome. And message delivered without filter, direct to the pet parent making a decision on pet food.

I’ll leave you with this thought: PR is indeed the new advertising and word of mouth is the new PR. This evolution in media and content strategy is THE enabler.

What do you think?

By Robert Wheatley

Driving incremental media attention by stepping outside the Oval

Congratulations to Ikea for their creative use of an event strategy to drive editorial media attention nationally for their brand and business. Ikea moves into Washington, DC’s Union Station, literally, to install its own version of the Oval Office – a three dimensional, live, hands-on display of what they term is a “modern rendition of the iconic round room.”

Ikea states in their announcement press release: “President-elect Obama’s notion of change and his commitment to fiscal responsibility match the Ikea philosophy of practical and affordable home furnishings for all.” Visitors can sit in Ikea’s vision of what the President’s desk chair would be. And can also inscribe their best wishes to the incoming commander in chief inside a guest book that eventually makes its way to the Whitehouse.

Meanwhile a companion Web strategy goes live at www.embracechange09.com. There visitors find an interactive design tool with drag and drop capability to custom design your own version of the Oval office. As incentive to engage, you can sign up to win a $1,500 gift card to spiff up your own abode.

Leaving no stone unturned, the Union Station exhibit opening is preceded by a mock Presidential Motorcade touring around the city prior to the inauguration with furniture strapped to limo roofs. Transit and outdoor ads are employed as an overlay to draw attention to the event beyond the earned media – which of course goes national because this idea is just unique enough to deserve it.

Great thinking coalesces here with key ingredients:

Linkage to a major cultural moment

Innovative, fun, interactive event in a high traffic location

Execution involves Ikea’s products

Messaging of change and affordability consistent with the brand’s positioning

Pre-event publicity to drive excitement and media buzz

Web presence that permits those who don’t live in DC to participate in the fun

By Robert Wheatley

Generational shift ushers in new era

With uncertain market conditions, upheaval in traditional communications channels and consumer behavior in a constant state of flux, it simply doesn’t pay to assume what you did this year and the “rules” that governed your strategic thinking, should remain unchanged in the year ahead.

Continued expansion of niche markets and the evolution of sub-segments of consumer “tribes” will remain as a constant. The product development world still favors mass customization and segmentation in nearly every category. Consumers also show an unrelenting desire to congregate socially in communities of shared interest.

That said there are over-arching trends that should be considered as we look towards communicating effectively in 2009. Roy Williams had an insightful post in November at his Monday Morning Memo blog that built off a book titled Generations, published in 2003. The book chronicles a curious behavior in Western society the authors assert is as predictable as the sunrise and set: a generational pendulum swing that moves back and forth between an Idealist mindset and a Civic perspective.

Baby boomers (I am one of them) may have been one of the most obvious examples of this collective attitude shift when, in 1963 a new era of Idealism was introduced. Says Williams – “By the end of 2008 there won’t be a Baby Boomer left in America. The last reluctant holdout will finally admit that Woodstock is over, Kennedy is dead and the Idealism of the 60’s was a wistful dream.” Williams makes the case the final move to the other side of the pendulum swing, — to a Civic point of view — will be complete at the end of this year.

This new global mindset should be factored into communications and selling strategy in the year ahead. Here in summary are several of Williams’ recommendations:

Efficiency is the new service

With busy lifestyles getting busier and communications technology allowing for instant access to information on what products to buy and where, consumers will be looking for a combination of quality, price and quickness. In this scenario, efficiency in customer interaction wins out over high touch, relationship selling.

Authenticity reigns supreme

Today’s consumer comes equipped with the most highly refined bullshit detector ever devised. It is sensitive, accurate and always on. So in today’s era of “conversational” marketing and consumer control if you don’t or won’t admit a mistake or misstep, they may not believe the other things you have to say. Keep it real!!

Horizontal connectedness

Gone now are the days of defined and categorized vertical social worlds. Labels like white collar, blue collar are not salient. The new American dream isn’t about pulling ahead of others, it’s about being a productive team member. Winning is less important than belonging.

The new mass media is… word of mouth

Technology is empowering. It is also unforgiving in its ability to facilitate radical change. Now we have instant access to everything. Viral marketing was not created by an agency. It is an outgrowth of a horizontally connected world where people share their discoveries, and work to help each other avoid mistakes.

Stop boasting

Talk is cheap. And as we’ve said repeatedly in this blog, actions speak louder than words. Telling people what you believe is not the same as showing them. What are the “proofs of claim” in your communications? How can consumers experience these things for themselves? Messaging about how great you are is less compelling.

So here’s the call to action for 2009: what higher strategic purpose can your brand align itself with that transcends the obvious “I’m trying to make a sale here” interaction with consumers? How can you be more genuine, authentic, credible with consumers who expect brands they prefer to be a reflection of their own needs and passions?

Says Williams – “In the words of Bill Bernbach, I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.”

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