BrandDigital | BrandSimple: The Blog

Well, the holiday gifts are unwrapped and according to polls, anecdotal and otherwise, the booty included lots of digital toys for good girls and boys of every age. Given that digital technology is an absolute given in our lives, I thought it might be interesting to look back at what I considered the top digitally-based marketing initiatives of 2009.

While a red carpet and paparazzi were unnecessary in my conferral, like other award shows, there was more than one category in my determination of the best of the best. That’s because success in the digital arena is based on two key criteria. First is functionality. While we all spend time on Hulu catching up on missed television shows and checking in on must-see YouTube uploads, most people are in a utility mode when they’re online. They want to accomplish something. Branding that gives consumers a way to make the things they already do easier, more enjoyable, or more convenient in some way is successful branding. Make it a pleasure to reserve an airline flight, hotel room, or a seat at a restaurant. Make it more fun to share photographs of family vacations. Make it a cinch to pay a bill or resolve a billing dispute. Make it simpler to get instant help with a product or service issue. Victory in digital branding is analogous to victory in any other type of branding. Companies that take advantage of any experience to reinforce what makes their brands relevantly different strengthen the association consumers have with the benefits of their brands. That, in a nutshell, is what the functionality category is all about.

The second categorical metric for success in digital campaigns is pass-along value. Word of mouth has always been a critical component in branding. When people feel good about a brand they’ll tell others about the experience. In the cyber-world, word-of-mouth can have steroidal effect. When people feel passionate or are amused by something they see online, they’ll take the time to pass it along to others, in this case millions of others, building awareness without a huge price tag. In the digital space, creativity and story-telling are hot commodities, and therefore deserved a separate category in my top campaign roster.

So, which brands made it into my winning envelopes?

• Best Buy – In the functionality category my first handshake goes to Best Buy for its Twelpforce initiative in which Employees sign up to receive tweets from customers to help them, via Twitter, on any technology-related product issues. Providing immediate service within this giant “helpful” community is a great way to differentiate the brand from other tech retailers who respond to troubleshooting with generic “Frequently Asked Question” sites. The Twelpforce goes right to the heart of a better customer service experience, solving individual customer problems on their terms, not the company’s.

• USPS – My next nod goes to the United States Postal Service for its augmented reality application that enables consumers to see whether objects they want to pack and ship will fit into specific-size boxes. With a “virtual box simulator,” users hold the objects in front of their Web cams and can see themselves on the screen holding these things against a 3-D box. The tool enables people to turn and manipulate the objects to see if the box is the right size. Part of the USPS’s “A Simpler Way’ campaign, this digital branding application is a perfect fit for my functionality criteria as it separates the USPS from its competition by actively demonstrating how the brand makes life more convenient for its customers.

• B.F. Goodrich – Finally in this category is B. F. Goodrich’s “Nation of Go”campaign. The intuitive Web site lets people map and share travel plans, along with best routes and driving and auto maintenance tips. While talking and selling tires are not the principal objectives of the site, creating a community of drivers who can assist each other and provide input and feedback about all things automotive is a strong way to differentiate the B. F. Goodrich brand of tires from the others.

• Queensland Tourism Board – In the “pass-along” category, my kudos to an initiative called “The Best Job in the World.” This campaign began with a search for a caretaker for an enchanting resort in the Great Barrier Reef who, in exchange for caretaking responsibilities, a weekly blog post and YouTube video, could enjoy all the fabulous amenities of living, full-time, on this incredibly beautiful property. It was a powerful use of the Web and a very clever way to get the message out. Not necessarily a brand-building event, but more of a one-time promotion, “The Best Job in the World,” nonetheless, captivated an audience of thousands, building initial awareness of the splendid venue.

• Charmin – Equal kudos go to Procter & Gamble and its “Enjoy the Go” program for Charmin which was created to raise awareness of the clean, free, family-friendly brand-sponsored restrooms in New York’s Times Square. Again, intended as more promotional than long-term brand equity builder for Charmin, the initiative was so unexpected and so “Candid Camera” entertaining, there’s sure to be lingering good associations with the brand, especially as collateral campaign tactics include a mobile application developed to help people find clean restrooms around the country.

• Pringles – And, last, but not least in this “check-it-out!” category is my appreciation for the Pringles banner ad campaign. Yes, you read right, banner ad. Not the most highly regarded tactic in digital marketing given the generally annoying disposition, the Pringles effort is completely delighting and deserves applause for its story-within-a-story format. The ingenious little tales don’t take you to a Pringles Web site, but the fun and repeated clicking required to follow the story line earned Bridge Worldwide, the agency responsible, a Cyber Gold Lion at the Cannes award show (a tad more official than my humble bestowals).

To succeed at digital branding, at any branding, requires that you demonstrate how your brand’s promise will make life meaningfully different for consumers. Where digital branding differs by degree is that it must either improve consumers’ lives through its utility, supporting what the brand stands for in peoples’ minds, or it must be entertaining enough to build brand awareness through pass-along value. As we enter 2010, I wish all companies success in their digital efforts, and all consumers better, more convenient, more fun lives, as a result.

It was with great interest that I read a recent article in the New York Times about how Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are turning away from tradtional PR to spread news of their newly-hatched companies and turning straight to the tactics likely to make them richer entrepreneurs – digital technology and, in particular, the technology that facilitates word-of-mouth. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur, or even a Silicon Valley resident to understand the innate capabilities of digital technology to spread news, be it good or bad, truth or heresay. The reason for my great interest in this Times article was how it echoed the sentiments in a piece I just wrote for this week’s print edition of Brandweek magazine about GM’s “Reinvention” campaign. In it I explain that while this once-mighty brand set forth its new promise to become a more efficient company in a series of television ads, this top-down pronouncement isn’t going win any friends or influence people. It’s only when people start tweeting, blogging and spreading their experiences under the digital magnifying glass that proof of its promise will be validated – and credible.

Most of us have heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs – you know, the need to gratify hunger, thirst, shelter before moving up to less elemental things. But a hierarchy of human needs relative to our digital life? Absolutely. People divide online pursuits into several tiers, the bottom, or most elemental, being the utilitarian stuff like checking emails, looking up addresses, chatting with friends, and the higher tiers being the more diversionary, like watching favorite shows on Hulu. It’s become apparent to me and many other branding professionals that when trying to engage people online, it’s critical to understand where they are on this hierarchy of digital behavior. In my most recent article in Forbes Online, I explain in greater detail why timing in marketing messages is everything and what some of the best brands are doing – with very gratifying results.

(Image courtesy of Shannonpatrick17 via Flickr)

(image courtesy of M. Keefe via Flickr)

Tweeting, texting, posting , poking – we all know that social networking helps us keep in touch with what’s going on out there. It’s been my observation that many companies are using the same digital tactics and techniques to help its employees keep in touch with what’s going on in there – inside the organization, that is. As brands become increasingly “humanized” by digital technology that both connects everyone and makes everything transparent, smart companies are helping their employees better understand “who” their brand is, and what it represents to consumers by setting up internal social networking programs. To see how this works, and what leadership teams at Best Buy, Schwab, and Wells Fargo are doing, take a look at my
recent article in Forbes online.

Will Twitter soon replace Facebook as the online social connector of choice? As the number of news stories about who’s tweeting whom seems to increase with the number of Twitter users, it’s a question being asked by marketers who use social networks as part of their branding initiatives. But this isn’t the question they should be asking. Instead, the question, or rather, questions, that smart companies are asking are: What’s the difference in how consumers are using these social sites and how should branding strategies be built, as a result? I address these questions in my recent column on Forbes online, which includes input from Ford’s head of social media, Scott Monty. As far as smart marketers are concerned, when it comes to Twitter versus Facebook, it’s no contest.

(image courtesy of luc legay via flickr)

How much did social networking have to do with the fact that we watched Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States? From this voter’s perspective, a lot. Yes, it helped that there was a former Facebook member on the Obama staff, but more than this are the millions of Facebookers, voters all, who understand that social media sites now play two critical roles in their lives. First, it’s a way for them to keep track of their friends, virtual and otherwise, the initial reason for the existence of Facebook and the others. But more germane to politics and inaugurations, social media has become a way, if not the way, to spread and vet opinions about everything from music, to sports, cars, clothing, movies and political candidates. It’s the way a fast-growing and increasingly older number of people stay plugged in to what’s important. According to David Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor, Internet and Technology at Fortune magazine, Twitter and its tweeting are miniscule in their influence compared to the burgeoning communication power of Facebook. As he told me, “For anyone to dismiss it as a digital diversion for the younger set is a big, big mistake.” The net-net for brands is that anything with this much consumer engagement can – and will – be turned into a platform for consumer buying decisions. Ask brand Obama. He’ll tell you it’s branding change you’d better believe in.

What makes digital content go viral? In a year during which both a truly awesome presidential election and truly awful financial crisis held sway, there was no dearth of online video, both reality and parody. Some of it people watched and passed along with abandon. Some they just watched and abandoned. As a perpetual student of digital behavior, it’s fascinating for me to see what strikes a common chord and goes on to make the viral hit list, and what just dies on the online vine. From a marketing point of view, in many cases the most virally catchy stuff is the result of brilliant creative thinking and execution. Not expensive, mind you, just strategically innovative, like the Burger King Flame campaign aimed at adolescent-minded guys for whom the idea of a meat-scented body spray is pretty sizzling. Keeping the creative bar high in the contest for online eyeballs is definitely one way to assure your content will catch on. The other, I have to admit, is just plain luck. In many cases, dumb luck. Take a look at our colleagues at Sterling Cooper, and you’ll see what I mean. (In the meantime, if I were you, I’d opt for brilliant creative.)

I love the way Don Draper and his band of merry Mad Men talk the talk. But, were they part of this current digital branding world, would their talk cut it? Probably not. One of the things I write about in BrandDigital is that talking the digital talk, being able to throw around digital terms with abandon, is no substitute for knowing exactly what makes a digital branding app work; why some apps catch on and run virally rampant while others simmer like limp noodles. Success in digital branding means knowing how and why things work and how to become part of an on-going online conversation without interrupting it. Take a look at this third episode of Digital Mad Men and you’ll see that while these guys can certainly talk a good game, they may not really know what they’re talking about.

Among the topics I write about in BrandDigital is the role social networking sites play in the brand-building process. While some marketers believe that to succeed in the digital economy a brand must have some presence on sites like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn, most others agree with my premise that a brand should carefully consider the value of where it chooses to hang out, not to mention its acceptance by this like-minded group. As Kevin Lane Keller, a professor of marketing at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business aptly put it, “You don’t want your brand to come across as a professor crashing the frat party.” His point, obviously, is that as much as you think your brand might fit seamlessly into a particular social network crowd, it’s crucial to remember that you’re still “the brand,” and they’re the consumers.

The value of this point was driven home a week or so ago at the Fortune Brainstorm: Tech conference which I had the opportunity to attend. Among the folks participating in a discussion chaired by the magazine’s technology editor David Kirkpatrick, was Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, who talked about this well-populated social network’s position on “brands as friends.” Akin to what I write about in my book, Sandberg suggested that the key to successful branding on a social networking site is the ability to determine what type of people are spending time on the site, to listen to what they’re talking about to each other, what interests they share, and then determine whether your brand can offer anything of relevance to the virtual conversation. Your branding objective should be to demonstrate to participants on the site that your brand has a good reason for being there; that engaging in the branding will be worth their while and worth sharing with their friends, word of mouth being a key dynamic in the social networking scene.

Sandberg gave a great example of a brand that heeded this online social branding principle. Mazda, recognizing that one of the target audiences it wanted to befriend was hanging out on Facebook, decided to launch a branding initiative which involved helping it plan for the design of its 2018 MAZDA3. The company’s relevant contribution clearly got people to pay attention. Not only did Facebook members submit designs, hundreds of them voted on the design features they’d be interested in, something that will help enable Mazda to meet consumer needs more relevantly than its competitors. Mazda didn’t simply repurpose an existing ad or video for its Facebook presence, it developed a branding strategy specifically for a particular social networking scene, taking into account both the “friends” and the business objective it wanted to meet. Any brand can learn from Mazda’s experience that to win friends and influence people on a social network site, it must identify who’s at the party, know what these folks are interested in and make sure it has something of relevance to add to the conversation.