Keeping the main thing the main thing

I have a new piece up over at Marketing Magazine, thinking about marketing as business strategy and encouraging everyone to dig a little deeper into the businesses they work with and on:

Look at Google. They weren't always Google, not like we know them. They created one of the most remarkable services the world has ever known and built their empire on being remarkable. Products and services do not get more remarkable than that. Where are those products? The ones that don't require a clever tagline and a media spend to get the attention they deserve? Why are we not sitting with our clients and challenging them on what is actually remarkable about their work?

Hope you enjoy!

I know what you're about to say like your hype man

I was going to spend the week talking about story-telling in interactive mediums and the ways brands can leverage it, and I'l get to that, but I've woken up with something on my mind that I want to get to first.

Over the weekend when not lying in the park or dining with friends I was working on my latest (overdue) column for Marketing Magazine. It will be out in their December/January issue and I was talking about brands finding their voice online, which I'm quite excited about, I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts when it comes out.

I feel though like that's the running part, and we're struggling to get the walking right; we're doing that because the fundamentals of success in business and marketing are shifting and we're not keeping pace with it. I harp on about it, but only because I think it is important enough to do so: intent. Intent, intent, intent, intent, intent, intent, intent, intent.

While you're at your desk this week, in each situation I want you to ask yourself "What's my intent here?". We make sales calls under the guise of building relationships, we dump on other agencies under the guise of offering advice. We put energy into things that distract us from our main purpose in the hopes that people won't really get what we're on about.

And then we go do it with the brands we're supposed to be building.

Let's all agree, week beginning Monday October 13th, 2008 to gut-check what the intent is in the work we do this week. Let's not discuss "new ways to talk to our customers" when the reality is we need email addresses added to a database. By stripping away the stuff we cloak our actions with, we get to the heart of the matter much faster.

And I promise, the campaigns you run are going to be all the more effective for it.

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Image courtesy of The Alieness Gisela Giardino, with thanks to compfight.

Step by step

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This is something I touched on in a much earlier post, but never really dug out and gave it the attention it deserved. I shared it with others over a beer, Julian gave it a good "shit-test", and Scott Drummond even stole my thunder and quoted me on it. So, here it is, David Gillespie's Marketing Mantra. Five points, 2 of which are mine, the other three are linked to their authors who you should absolutely take the time to read.

Try it on for size and let me know what you think.

1. Markets are conversations.

2. Conversations happen around social objects.

3. Social objects are products or services that are remarkable.

4. Remarkable is not just something special, but something worth being remarked about.

5. A great product, and even better customer service are the most remarkable things you can offer.

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Image courtesy of Pensiero, with thanks to compfight.

One bourbon, one scotch, one beer

Julian Cole and I have been going back and forth a bit lately on social objects offline and some of that chatter is making its way online. He put up a vlog yesterday which Scott from Marketing Magazine chimed in on. Not wanting to be left out, I added my 2 cents. I hadn't actually uploaded anything to YouTube before, brought back some of the initial terrors that come with blogging (the world will see this, oh no!).

Anyway, the videos are below. Watch them (Scott's alone is priceless for the shots of his afro, little children may turn away in fear, you've been warned) and then leave a comment, or better yet, add your own response! While you're at it, give Julian some stick for the video responses needing to be approved by the owner - Jules I thought the whole point of social media was acknowledging you couldn't control the conversation right!?! :)

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=jhXSR4q1cMY]



[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvFVzSMg2OQ]

Every day is a winding road

So I had a point, somewhere in there I had a point, and there's a gem of a good idea but it will take a while to deliver it a little more succinctly. But that's OK, I don't mind taking a little extra time being largely right.

The point is, the more interested you are in the world around you, the more likely it is you'll share common interests with the people you meet. If your world view fails to grasp interests beyond yourself, then you had better hope you come into contact with people who are at least as interested in you as you are, or else you're in trouble.

This is the crux of my latest online piece over at Marketing Magazine.

The conversation [focusing on an individual's fashion] only extends to that moment, to the outfit which is noticed and commented on. The conversation about others involves the designer (say Chistopher Bailey at Burberry), their own path to where they are (working under Tom Ford at Gucci), the campaigns around the revitalisation of that brand (Kate Moss), how it ties in to classic British fashion and the campaigns hark back to great David Bailey photographs of British icons. It extends to the quintessentially British elements of fashion, the things unique to that most unique of isles.

You can't fake genuine curiosity or interest in the world around you, and the best marketers in the coming age will be the ones that draw the parallels across industry and culture, born from their own experience being simply fascinated with the world around them.

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Image courtesy of nobleIgnoble, with thanks to compfight.

It's hard to say you love someone (and it's hard to say you don't)

I am currently crunching out my latest column for Marketing Magazine's...hmm...September issue I think, I tend to lose track. So my thoughts are preoccupied with telling the offline marketers how to get the conversation started while delivering a few home truths, we'll see how that goes.

But I'm also grinning ear to ear as I type this, so much good work out there this morning, and rather than talk about one thing, I want to point you in a few directions.

1. Gaping Void - a recent post from Hugh Macleod which really hits home for me at the moment:

It's good to be young and full of dreams. Dreams of one day doing something "insanely great". Dreams of love, beauty, achievement and contribution. But understand they have a life of their own, and they're not very good at following instructions. Love them, revere them, nurture them, respect them, but don't ever become a slave to them. Otherwise you'll kill them off prematurely, before they get the chance to come true.

2. My good friend Julian Cole has a social media framework which is a great piece of thinking, it should be read and pondered and then executed. No questions.

3. Lastly, because I'm in a goofy mood, XKCD. It is a regular web comic, often bizarre, rather amusing.



OK, back to the column. Happy Friday everyone, let's go light on the marketing today and put a little bit extra into the stuff that really matters. Deal?

Deal.

The Revelation of Intent

My latest column is up over at Marketing Magazine's site. I said a couple days ago I was thinking a lot about intent this week, call it a cosmic quest for something deeper than the window dressing. If I wasn't in advertising, that would actually be a good thing.

There's a lot of talk lately about brands and the voices they speak with. Be it through products or services, conversation is the new currency through which everyone wants to be measured. If what we've been saying for a while now is true, and our brands are to be imbued with human traits and personalities in order to inform the way they speak to their audience, then we need to look at intent...

The rest of the piece is over at Marketing Magazine.

RSS feeds added to Marketing Magazine site

This is a bit of an admin post (1, 2, 3 - "Boooooooring!!!"). Marketing Magazine have added RSS feeds to their site for particular bloggers (including me). So, if you'd like to subscribe to my posts on Marketing Magazine you can now do so.

Additionally if you don't subscribe to this site currently but would like to, please go right ahead! It is free, easy and guaranteed to do many ill-defined and vague things.

And she's climbing the stairway...

Long-time listeners-first time callers would be aware I was included in a top 50 list of marketing blogs in Australia recently, put together by Adspace-Pioneers and Marketing Magazine (#17, thanks very much). Eschewing "It's an honour just to be nominated" dribble, it was a great chance to check out some of the other writers and marketers that exist in this space. There's a tremendous amount of value out there and it's well worth everyone's time to take a look at the other sites comprising the list.

One key aspect which had been over-looked on a lot of these sites though was the choice of technology employed. There are three main blog platforms - Wordpress (which is what this site is), TypePad and Blogger, all of which have their own pros and cons, but perform the same base functions.

Contrast this with Vox, a site I hadn't heard of before until I visited Lexy Klain's blog (#29 on the list). Lexy does a good job of providing thought-provoking content, I actually went quite far back into her archives to get a sense of her thought process. Satisfied, I went to comment on a post, and to congratulate her on making the list, and that is when the fun stopped.

Vox requires you to register if you wish to comment, something I abhor. Having spent yesterday afternoon at the Melbourne PubCamp event being bored to tears by folk who do not yet understand for some God-forsaken reason that open beats closed, I was surprised to see a blog site pursuing this tack.

By choosing this platform, Lexy opts out of a raft of conversation provided by comments. Fred Wilson often says the comments on his site far outweigh the value created in his blog posts. This is a participatory medium, and we need to make the barriers to entry for everyone as low as possible.

Lex, five stars for the wealth of thought you're providing, but I can get it elsewhere. And if I can't interact or am put off by the barriers placed in front of me, I won't return. Those who haven't read it should brush up on Forrester's POST methodology for more on this.

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Image courtesy of moniker, with thanks to compfight.

Brand rape - or - Assault with an unsightly sticker

Dear Mr. Mechanic,

You did a great job on my car, fixed the glove box brilliantly. You sent a follow up letter which was brief and to the point, you did everything right. Except you put a sticker on my back window without asking me and in a spot I was unlikely to see until the next time I put my guitars in my car.

Which happened a couple days ago.

Permission marketing is just that, it requires permission. Otherwise you're just forcing yourself on people, and that doesn't work anymore. Earn people's trust, respect their time AND their dollar. Don't try to put words in their mouths, because that only works as long as you're in the room, and you don't have time to be there in the room with everyone of your customers (even if you did, you'd just breed resentment, not loyalty).

The rest of this post is available at Marketing Magazine.

Creative Is Not A Department (formerly Wide Open Spaces) is named in the Top 50 Australian marketing sites

Compiled by Julian Cole of Adspace Pioneers fame, he has posted the list on his blog as well as having it featured in the August edition of Marketing Magazine (which I also contribute to). Thanks to Julian for the hat tip - this site came in at #17 - I'll do my best to live up to it.

								Total
1	Banner Blog	6	6	8	6	8	9	43
2	Servant of Chaos	9	5	8	6	6	5	39
3	Duncans Tv Adland	6	5	7	6	8	5	37
4	Corporate Engagement	8	5	5	4	5	8	35
5	Better Communication Results	8	3	6	5	6	6	34
6	Young PR	7	5	6	5	5	6	34
7	Small Business Branding	7	3	0	8	7	8	33
8	Get Shouty	8	5	7	5	4	4	33
9	Personlize Media	8	5	4	4	4	5	30
10	Brand DNA	6	4	6	5	5	4	30
11	PR Disasters	7	5	4	4	4	5	29
12	Ettf.net	6	5	5	4	4	3	27
13	1+1=3	5	3	5	4	5	5	27
14	Business of Marketing & Branding	6	5	6	4	4	1	26
15	Media Hunter	7	2	6	4	3	3	25
16	Australian SEO Blog	4	4	5	4	6	1	24
17	Wide Open Spaces	8	5	4	3	3	1	24
18	The Marketer	7	3	6	4	3	0	23
19	Three Billion	6	4	0	4	4	5	23
20	Innovation Feeder	6	5	3	3	3	2	22
21	Campaign Brief Blog	6	4	0	3	5	3	21
22	Eicolab	7	5	2	3	3	0	20
23	Adspace-Pioneers	7	3	3	3	2	2	20
24	Publicity Queen	8	4	1	1	2	3	19
25	Filtered	6	4	0	2	3	3	18
26	Marketing Easy	6	3	0	3	5	1	18
27	Hothouse	6	4	1	2	4	1	18
28	Mark Neely's Blog - 3rd Horizon	7	3	2	2	3	0	17
29	Lexy Klain	7	3	1	3	2	1	17
30	Peter Sheahan Live	6	4	0	1	4	2	17
31	In my atmosphere	6	4	0	3	2	1	16
32	Elbow Grease	4	4	0	3	2	3	16
33	Falkayn	5	4	2	0	2	1	14
34	Pigs Don't Fly	6	4	1	1	2	0	14
35	Diffusion	7	4	0	1	1	1	14
36	Australian Small Business	6	3	0	0	4	0	13
37	The Jason Recliner	4	4	1	2	1	1	13
38	The Wayfarer	7	3	0	1	1	1	13
39	Adnotes	6	3	1	1	2	0	13
40	Ryan's View	6	4	0	2	1	0	13
41	B&T	7	4	0	1	1	0	13
42	Zero Budget Marketing Ideas	6	3	1	1	1	0	12
43	Blackwatch	5	3	0	0	0	3	11
44	Fresh Chat	5	2	1	1	1	1	11
45	Latin Ocean	5	2	1	1	1	1	11
46	Arrow Internet SEO	7	2	0	0	1	1	11
47	The Sticky Report	7	0	1	2	0	0	10
48	Naked Communications-The Flasher	8	0	0	1	0	1	10
49	Pixel Paddock	5	1	0	1	0	1	8
50	Send up a larger room	7	0	0	1	0	0	8

It doesn't have to be anything

Brainstorming ideas for a clients impending product launch, a gun account manager (as in she's great, she doesn't manage a client who manufactures guns) and I came up with something that was largely experiential, nailed the target market, and delivered on the promise of the brand all in one. Good idea we said. Great idea we said.

It's not digital we said - but does it have to be?

When I was thinking about the first column to write for Marketing Magazine, I kept coming back to this notion of what digital wasn't as opposed to what it was. I canvassed a few opinions and was bemused by Iain Tait's cryptic reply; "Digital is not a thing anymore."

Some time after that, indeed quite recently, I suddenly realised what he meant. It reminded me of something Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson had said to me a few months earlier: "The second you try to think outside the box, you're disregarding a lot of really good, valid stuff."

A good idea is a good idea, and as long as it delivers for your audience, and it doesn't have to be anything else.

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Image courtesy of NMCIL, with thanks to compfight.

Facebook lands buttered side down

One of the joys of now being a columnist is having the editor of the magazine call up and berate you for over-due pieces. Picture any actor who has played a journalist (I'm thinking Clooney personally) called by his very attractive but somewhat neurotic editor who has told he has until the end of the day to get his story in or he is fired. Note how cool he plays it, how he has arranged to discuss his column over dinner with her (and probably breakfast too). Got that image in your head?

Right. My life is nothing like that.

Still, I was called today because my latest piece was over-due. I said I had nothing to say, she said not to worry, that I could write about butter and it would be interesting.

So that's what I did. Spurred on by the recent hoopla surrounding their blocking Google's Friend Connect, I explain why butter is a crock, why Facebook is butter, and why, for me, it starts to spell the end of this media darling.

...trying to control what people do with (their own information) is the digital equivalent of telling rain which way to fall in a thunderstorm. Facebook eschewed a bunch of good stuff to get to where it is, using ingredients that were good for a whole lot of other, better, products and services. Now they’re desperately trying to maintain hold on user data, under the daft assumption it was somehow theirs to play with in the first place.

It's already been suggested I'm wrong on this, I'm not so sure...

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Image courtesy of bezmyaso, with thanks to Flickr Storm.

The joy of being wrong

Some people have a love-hate relationship with their own fallibility. Not me. I revel in it.  I was talking earlier today about widening the range of ideas you let in to your head so as to stimulate your own thinking from a different perspective.

I was thinking about this a bit more today after posting over at the Marketing Magazine forums on the subject of being wrong in a digital space. We should be embracing the rapid pace at which everything is changing; every error, every out and out mistake is a lesson learned and a rule formed in a space where so few exist.



I wrote at the beginning of the year I was spending more time thinking about what was least wrong as opposed to most right. Semantics sure, but the point is we don't know right now, and nor should we. If everyone could for just one day check their egos at the door and revel in the fact we're still figuring this out, we'd get a lot more done.

Image from Paul Arden's It's not how good you are... - found via Andrew Cafourek's Tumblog.

Authenticity revisited

I'm involved in a discussion over on the Marketing Mag forums. The case centers around an Australian band called The Presets and them involving themselves in a promotion in BMW where a track of theirs gets remixed. The association of brands is obscure at best, but what I don't get is The Presets not owning up to it in the first place. In a recent interview on Triple J (Australia's larges independent radio station), there was no mention of the remix, or of BMW. This says to me The Presets are embarrassed and Triple J, having supported them from day dot even more so.

In a futile effort to display some semblance of independence, both parties have succeeded in completely dodging an issue. If a band/person/organisation/brand/product/whatever is going to make a move like this, they at least need to have the guts to own it. Triple J love their indie darlings so aren't going to call them on it (that's called selling out, but apparently only when a big corporation is involved), and The Presets - who could justify it as easy as "It paid for our next European tour" - just look shady.

Bad moves all around. This post has more. In particular:

You need to stand for what you stand for. Every. Second. Of. The. Day.

Amen.

Social networks and anti-social activity

A few weeks back I posted that I'd been invited by Marketing Magazine (Australia's most widely read advertising and marketing publication) to contribute regularly to their magazine and blog on their newly-revamped website. My first post is up, looking at social networks and why they're not the digital wet dream marketers are hoping for.

What people fail to understand is the activities carrying the social media boom have always been social. Music, movies, fan clubs, photos of friends, staying in touch, whatever. Technology has facilitated a new means for those things to take place but it hasn’t changed the core motivation.

Read the whole post (no registration required).

Call it unreasonable, call it progress

Someone once told me I'd never had an opinion I wasn't inclined to share, and I can't say I argued much with them at the time. Given to spouting off at the drop of a hat, it's only made possible by the fact I'm quite happy to be proven wrong. One of the more famous quotes from George Bernard Shaw is the following: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." It's one I quite enjoy, and while I can't say I strive to emulate it, it seems to pop up more often than not.

Something has to be said for it though, as I'm lucky enough to have been invited by Marketing Magazine to contribute a regular blog to their site and a column in each digital issue they publish (that comes out quarterly). Having just submitted my first column, I was surprised how nervous I was sending it off, knowing it would be available solely in print, and solely to people who had paid for the privilege.

Do I really think my opinion is worth paying for? Frankly, I do. But in this instance it wasn't my idea. The editors of Marketing were the ones who decided it was worth paying for, all I can do is live up to their expectations, and hopefully, on occasion, exceed them. I look forward to discussions on their site and on this blog, with a few more insights from readers and hopefully a number of ruffled feathers!

In the interim, head over to Marketing's current blog and get involved. It's written by Scott Drummond who is equal parts funny and insightful. And for the record, I was saying that before they came calling.