Cleaning Up Your Brand

With the proliferation of the Internet and blogosphere small, bombshells seem to be dripping each day from all political stripes on their candidates backgrounds.

The stakes are huge in this election (at least one federal leader is destined to step down afterward), so any incremental advantage you leverage over your opponent is fair game, and bloggers/media aren't ones to shy away from red meat.

Drip, drip, drip...

How does one get itself in such a bee's nest? Aside from doing stupid (or illegal) acts, a lot has to do with the fact that many people online, forget that the net is truly a public place that forgets nothing.

That's right: anything you post on the Internet is on here for good. So with that in mind you should really consider your reputation in the long run and how that will affect your personal brand. Will you be comfortable defending any (questionable) comments or acts 5, 10, 15, 25+ years down the road? Are your activities creating the persona your looking to portray?

Authenticity matters.

It's not only business or corporations that have a brand; we all do. And the sooner we start paying attention to the impacts of our actions in a wired world, the better off you will be should controversy later erupt.

Instead of calling the fire dept after the house is burned down consider creating a "fire prevention strategy". Call it "proactive PR". There's a reason why the crisis communications specialists get paid handsomely - urgent reputation management is not easy when your trying to put out a blaze.

But if you do get stuck here are a couple tips from monster to cleaning up your online presence:

1. Scope Out the Damage

First, determine what damaging information exists. Enter your name at Google, MSN and Yahoo and see what turns up in the first four or five pages of results. Anything troubling? Mark it for action. Then sign up for the alerts available at spots like Google Alerts; when information about you is added or updated, you’ll find out via email.

2. Request Removal

You may be able to have the material removed, but remember that much of what appears online is archived at the Internet Archive, a nonprofit initiative designed to be a resource for historians and researchers.

Just be sure to learn as much as possible about the site before making your move. If you’re dealing with an in-your-face blog, sending an email to the blogger requesting that something about you be removed can backfire. Bloggers have been known to post those emails, so be aware that your request could end up casting more unfavorable attention on you.

As for search engines, don’t bother. You won’t have any luck asking them to rig their results in your favor.

3. Hire a Cleanup Service

A growing number of services can help you manage or clean up your online reputation. Along with ReputationDefender, these services include Defendmyname and Naymz. ReputationDefender’s reports, for instance, include a “destroy” option; choose that, and for $29.95, ReputationDefender will attempt to have a particular item about you removed. “We aim to save our clients time,” Chanin says. “We can do in two or three hours what it might take you from 72 to 96 hours [to do].”

But managing your reputation doesn’t always come cheap. ReputationDefender offers another level of service for $10,000. Under this plan, the company uses a variety of tactics to improve your online rep and ensure that the positive material about you rises to the top of search-engine results.

Public relations strategy doesn't have to expensive, but it can be if you don't invest enough time on a consistent basis, to check whats being said about you.

The Internet is (and will continue to remain) a double edge sword.

Preventative PR, is your best bet in keeping that swinging blade from drawing blood.

Focus on What Matters to your Customers

I was sitting in a consumer behaviour class watching as the instructor giving out magazines to each table; with the instructions being very simple:

Find an ad that really appeals to you and then present your findings to the class, using the arcane categories provided (I won't list them for your sake).

What I found was absolutely stunning. Instead of focusing on the big picture, people were dissecting the minutiae of every aspect of their chosen ad: logo placement, type font, and other meaningless details that a typical consumer would not even pick up in the 3 second glance they would give an ad. Never mind if they have already ignored magazine ads, or worse, the magazine didn't even appeal to their target market!

When marketers were in control of the message, and people's attention was plentiful, all this minor stuff matters. But in an attention deficit world attempting to discern consumer behaviour techniques from traditional advertising is a complete waste of time.

Sure you may get a response rate of 2-3%, but that means your ad was a 97-98% failure in reaching your target audience! Your time (and money) are better spent looking for ways to channel permissive marketing which has a 60,70,80 (or higher) percent response rate.

Incremental growth of a product almost always comes when your product is in a mature or decilning prodcut life cycle. Instead of pouring over the microscopic ways to discern an ad, try focusing your attention on the "big" strategic idea, where your product is inviting to your audience and can be easily communicated to others.

They say the devil is in the details, and you can see why; devil ideas don't build your brand in the long run!

7 Ways to Get Attention for Your Product

1. Your marketing must have intrinsic drama that appeals to your audience: what makes your target market tick? Is it scantily clad models or a new ways to better oneself? Psychographics matter

2. Your marketing must request participation from your audience: We don't live in a Web 1.0 world anymore (although you wouldn't know it judging from the passive websites out there). It's time to interact with your audience. Whether that be through comments on a blog, or the easiness of sharing your product with your customer's friends; there must be a call to action.

3. Your marketing should create an emotional response: people don't think in words or numbers, they think in images and stories. People already have their needs satisfied. It's time to look for that emotional extra, that consumers want from your product.

4. Your marketing must stimulate curiosity: Do I want to know more about your product, idea, or service? Creating this desire forces your audience to slow down and study your idea. Remember: the story your target customers tells themselves will determine whether they buy into your product or not.

5. Your marketing should surprise your audience: A startling headline, an unexpected visual image, and unusual opening gambit in a sales presentation, or a weird display window in a store; all have the power to attract key influences by surprising them (in a good way).

6. Your marketing must communicate expected information - in a detcepxenu way: (Hint: try reading the mystery word backwards) A creative twist, or a fresh way of saying or looking at something makes the expected unexpected. You have to get the obvious information in: what the brand does, who it benefits, and how. But doing it in an average, mediocre, middle of the road way is a great way for your target market to ignore you.

7. Your marketing should violate the rules of traditional marketing: People notice things that violate expected patterns (and patterns certainly exist in marketing). This means no spam, no interruptive marketing, and no throwing large amounts of money at advertising that doesn't work, or worse, can't measure. Creating remarkable products that invite users to sign up, raise their hand for more information sows the seeds for a long term relationship. Avoid the quickie sale and opt for the monogamous one.

To do marketing that has unexpected drama, violates traditional business beliefs, and causes people to talk about your product requires being creative and risky. So the real secret to stopping power is not to be average, stuck in the middle competing on price, it's to move to the extreme edges, where there is less competition, and unfulfilled markets waiting to seek out your product.

It's not easy. But that's why great marketing isn't seen as a cost, it's seen as in investment.

Let me know if you need help. I'll be glad to lend a hand.

5 Deadly Sins of Marketing Communications

Marketing Communications (also known as MarComm) deals with the promotional aspect of marketing. It is often the most visible part of marketing, and is what most people think of when they hear the word "marketing"

We all know marketing is much more than promotion, but I often see people communicating (or attempting to) in very poor fashion.

Thus, I have developed the following sins when trying to communicate your idea:

1. Your message fails to come to a point. What do you really stand for?
   
2. You use passive communication - where you can't tell who does what to whom.
3. You employ a sophisticated vocabulary without a good reason - big words on their own can actually make people confused by your offering.
4. Using difficult verb tenses instead of present tense. I.e. "writing would have to communicate" instead of "writing communicates"
5. Boring your customer - focus on telling a story not lecturing them!

Originality and surprise creates stopping power when your audience reads it. But if your message is too complicated, wordy, or can't be described in ten words or less, your target market will move on.

101 Ways to Destroy Your Business

We've all heard countless ways of attracting, and retaining our customers, but has anyone thought of spelling out the ways to kill your business?

Ed has: he created a fascinating document for those who can't go out of business fast enough. Originally posted on triiibes.com, a website to discuss new marketing and group behaviour. Ed has given us permission to share it publicly with his blessing.

Sometimes thinking backwards can help us think forward.

Some of my favourites are:

1. When you have a great product that’s selling well - look for ways to make it cheaper – your customers won’t really be able to tell the difference.

11. Use focus groups – don’t engage in real conversations with customers.

18. Don’t empower your customer service people to make wise decisions that make customers happy.

47. Make sure everyone in your company understands that people are loyal to products and brands, NOT other people.

48. When marketing – shoot for the masses – you know – the biggest audience – like the Super Bowl.

71. Only hire big “well-known” consulting firms to help you. After all, they’re the only people who know anything.

86. Punish those who challenge the status quo of your organization

101. Always charge for ice. If a customer refuses to pay for ice with his/her tea – give them hot tea without ice. How dare they try to pull one over on you!

When Crisis Communications Can't Work

When you make a comment that glorifies or wishes for the death of a fellow human being, no amount of PR spin will be acceptable.

Did Gerry Ritz make a gaffe? No, he made a (borderline) psychopathic, inhumane statement. He simply didn't care about the people affected by Listeriosis or his fellow parliamentarian.

A verbal statement almost always reflects what the speaker is thinking, from the deep subconscious part of a human being. They don't come out of nowhere.

You cannot defend the indefensible.

The only honourable thing to in a situation like this is to resign. Except there is no honour for Gerry. He left that (along with his dignity) on the conference call on Aug 30.

Time to go Gerry.

Lipstick + Pig = Still a Pig

Most marketing people focus too much of their time on improving their communication or promotional activities: "If only we could get all the branding integrated properly we would experience incremental increases in revenue!" screams your brand manager.

Often times it's the product that's really at fault. You can hang up on your previous brands like Bell did, but the products themselves are often the real reason people aren't engaged in your offer.

Faced with a classroom crunch, Ryerson University went looking for lecture style halls to meet the demand of their space starved campus. Not only did they find that space with a nearby Movie Theater, they accidentally improved their product (teaching) by having more comfortable seats, large visible screens, with an acoustic designed room.

The payoff? It seems attendance in class has not only remained strong, students are actually looking forward to going to class.

Improving the product often leads to improved communication; if your product is remarkable enough, people will tell their friends about your story.

Now if only my Alma mater could get rid of their 1960's style furniture...

Why People Hate Marketers

Kellogg's gets the dumbest marketing move of the year award - Lego Candy for kids!

And parent's are less than thrilled:

I would love to know what sick bastard at Kellogg's came up with this genius idea. I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like f***ing strawberries. Thanks a lot a**holes. Seriously, how in the hell did this ever get past their legal department. You can't tell me that this isn't a lawsuit just waiting to happen. I can only assume that their next product is fruit flavored thumbtacks.

Line extension of a product can be really dangerous (literally). Do you really want to alienate your key target audience? Especially those that are key influencers (parents) telling their friends (who are mostly likely parents as well). Safety issues are always a noteworthy issue that people feel compelled to pass along - especially when it deals with children.

Gotta love the good press here!

I suspect Kellogg's will end up pulling this product, albeit in an embarrassing fashion

Beating Stephen Harper

This post reaffirms this post on what the Liberals have to do if they want to form Government.

The same can be true for Opposition:

"Breeding Familiarity Can Maintain the Status Quo"

Choose your poison wisely.

Does Your Marketing Matter?

Seth has some very important marketing questions that I think every Canadian Politician should answer while campaigning in this election.

Granted they may seem simple, but I can guarantee your answers will not be:

1. Is it worth doing?
2. What was my impact?
3. Will it matter in the long haul?
4. What sort of connections did I create?
5. Wherever you live, whatever you do, you have an obligation. What is your obligation?
   

Attracting Customers (and keeping them)

What is the best way to influence your ideas on others?

Is it through cold calling prospects all day? Dropping off brochures in neighborhoods? Or paying a premium to run an ad in newspaper, top radio station, or national TV network?

I think there's a much easier way with better return on your buck and time.

Instead of interrupting people's day (or worse: when they're eating), why not create fabulous content for them to find you?

If you idea is so noteworthy people will be compelled to tell their friends about you. Their friends in return will tell others, and many of those the people who hear your story may contact you for more information.

This is what new marketing is really all about - creating product that are personalized, anticipated, and relevant to your target audience; while making it easy for them to spread your message.

Bringing us back to influence, you should ask yourself how your time is best spent. Is it with media buyers or learning how to blog? Is it with canvassing your local neighborhood or spending more time with your existing clientèle? How bout adding more customers/prospects to your CRM software or finding out what really motivates your customers to stay with you?

Remember you only have 24 hours in a day and it can be very expensive to buy time (i.e. outsource). So making a plan on (what and who) you want to spend time with is so much more important than just spending time working "in" your business.

Finding key channels of influence can bring you more attention, more qualified customers, and more productivity to a sleepless, time starved, society.

What Marketing Is Really About

Marketing, more than any other business function deals with your customers. Customers can be anybody, a select group of people, the public at large, or even stakeholders.

Getting a sale at any cost was traditional marketing. Creating customer value and satisfaction is at the very heart of modern marketing. Creating this value while dealing with a noisy and cluttered marketplace is what new marketing is all about.

Ultimately, marketing is about delivering customer satisfaction at a profit (you decide what profit means). By under promising on your offering and over delivering on your product you create value. Real value. Value that creates long term relationship (think dating). Sometimes those relationships term into marriages (think brand Loyalty).

But it's not easy to do marketing as it used to. People distrust messages they hear from organizations, and trust their friends more. People are afraid of commitment and want to explore different purchasing avenues.

The job of marketing is not getting any easier. It's important to distinguish between a new marketer and an old one when looking for help or advice. They come from different schools of thought and have different ways of solving problems.

Everyone markets whether they believe it or not. It's up to you to decide what marketing means to you and how you will use it grow your business, organization, or personal brand.

When Ads Cross The Line

This is just tasteless.

No matter which poltical party you belong to, no matter what issue you fight to stand for, you do NOT deserve to have bird feces dropped on you or any other vile act to discredit your story.

I think Stepehn Harper's "running on his record" campaign is going to take a serious hit to his party's brand (or his personal brand; I can't make the dinstinctinon). As a seasoned campaginer, Harper should have known better when Kim Campbell tried something similar. It only takes one serious blow to derail your authencity of your brand and consistency of your message. Expect to see the opposition to leverage this issue for days (if not weeks) to come.

If this is the only way you know how to communicate a message, you should not be marketing or running any type of organization. Ever.

What Happens If We Don't Organize?

We've heard it time and time again:

If you "fail to plan" you "plan to fail".

Cliche, but true. But cliches are not what this post's about.

If you truly want to do have a remarkable marketing message, you need to understand what critical areas need organizing:

• For politicians - its the hordes of volunteers that can not only staff the campaign office, but can sneeze their candidate's ideas to their undecided friends.

• For Realtors, travel agents, and the self-employed - you need to organize around your own personal brand. That means finding ways to attract new customers while maintaining (and nurturing) your existing relationships.

• For multi national corporations - its all about being able to respond to customers and contentious issues with the same speed/quality of a mom and pop shop (Yes I'm talking to you Bell).

• For mom and pop shops - its about organizing around the quality and value you provide instead of competing on price.
  

Regardless of who you are or what you stand for, most power lies with those that can not only organize well but organize key areas of their business. Areas that are not only visible to your target audience, but can be talked about behind your back and cause you great harm.

The Internet has changed the playing field for organization. Now any of your customers can complain to your brand (hello trip advisor) with an audience waiting to listen. Or can spread the good news about your organization (hello face book) to those who are engaged in your brand.

Organizing yourself to make it easier, better, and worth telling other people, will give you the leverage to build your brand.

Power comes to those who organize, and organize well. How well do you organize?

Canadians Go to the Polls (and why you should care)

And they're off!

I will be blogging frequently about this snap election the Prime Minster called, but for now a synopsis on how Canadians vote.

Political marketing is still an exciting field, and something all political parties take very seriously.

The big issue right now is the bar has been set very high for Stephen Harper as some polls are already showing him in majority territory.

There are three ways you can basically cast your vote in our parliamentary system. This makes for a plethora of different marketing strategies parties use, to capture your vote:

1. Vote for the leader - this works if a political party has a leader that is perceived to strong and in control but lacks in substance (read: policy) that resonates with their target audience. Expect to see take this road, with lots of him and very little of his party.
   
2. Vote for the party - multilateral ism at its best. This works if the leader isn't as strong individually, but has a diverse range of expertise on their front bench that can work together to bring about change or new ideas. Expect to see Stephane Dion play this card with his "Dream Team".
   
3. Vote for the individual - don't like the party or the leader? Then one can vote strictly on who's running locally. This strategy is most successful when an candidate has a household brand and is very popular in their riding. It's how Chuck Cadman, Carolyn Parrish, and Thomas Mulcair were elected
   

So how will Canadians decide? Usually its a combination of 2/3 above. One key aspect in swaying the vote is organization, but we'll leave that for tomorrow.

For now, I'm not placing any bets.....yet.

Do Political Ads Matter?

In the old days when money bought attention, they certainly did.

However political marketing today still relies on mass marketing. Why? Because it's a zero sum game. That's right winner takes all and the losers go home. How many still matters more than "who". Yes mass marketing is not dead in this arena...yet.

It also helps that largest bloc of Canadian voters are the baby boomers; and they still pay attention to traditional advertising, especially political ads.

What about the younger ones? Youtube is a fun place to hang out altough the viewership is still low. Something political parties should think about when they look to engage the "unreachables"

This is only one area where niche marketing doesn't do well. Just ask the Green Party.

So the answer is a yes and no. Political marketing is a great recipe for an integrated marketing communications approach. The key lies in the execution (see organization post). Those that can bridge new marketing (for younger voters) and traditional marketing (for older ones) can do quite well in the next election.

It also helps if you target the undecided instead of preaching to the converted. Especially if the converted wasn't going to vote for you in the first place!

Why Canadians Don't Support the War in Afghanistan

It's often been said people don't have enough time and they need more space.

But it's really about a time & space continuum that forces us (or not) to pay attention:

Time - the more urgent it is to make a decision the more I pay attention. The more time I have to make a decision, the less I really care about it.

Space - If I can't see, touch, or smell it on the horizon I can't fathom the issue. Outta sight, outta mind.

When the time and space continuum converge, nasty things happen. Take the War in Afghanistan:many Canadians cannot fathom what it's like fighting the Taliban over there, and many more don't see an end in sight. A new poll confirming this is not surprising.

The same goes for climate change, good economic policies, savings, and credit cards. We are so consumed in the now, we forget or don't care about tomorrow.

This is the same for your product, idea, or service. People's minds are short; and if you can't (vividly) say it in 10 words or less, how the heck am I supposed to care about you later?

On the Importance of Creativity in Business

Don't get screwed like Lou!

What action are you taking that makes a difference, and matters to your customers?

Social Media Tools for Business

Social media shouldn't be a scary topic for people to engage their audience online, but for many it is. Most people don't know where to start or what tools are best suited for their situation. The real secret is to not utilize many social media devices in a mediocre way.

Instead concentrate on just a few, that you know you can do really really well with. People can sniff average organizations trying to add pizazz to their product through social media. Being real and authentic to your customers in how you communicate to them is the best way to engage people online.

1. Big Business (Aka "The Enterprise")

Corporate blog, blog aggregation, social bookmarking, social networking, internal wiki, Facebook applications

2. Small to Medium Sized Business

Company or personal blog, Facebook/Myspace, Video Sharing (Youtube), Flickr, Social tagging/bookmarking

3. Self Employed and Consultants

Personal blog, LinkedIn, Flickr, Social tagging/bookmarking

It should also be noted that social media tools really work best when the organizational culture and structure embrace this type of new marketing. That is, do not use social media because everyone else is doing it, use social media because your organizational culture believes in such tools.

I'll blog in another post exactly how each of these tools can specifically help you.

Why Canadian Political Parties Don't Get It

The traditional way to run a political campaign is to control your message. Control what you say
and when you say it. Control who hears it.

Tell one story to your raving fans, and a more moderate story to people in the center.

As voters have seen again and again, politicians are good at this. Some people call it lying. Others say it's stretching the truth. But in general, politicians have gotten away with it; and you the voter have been resigned to that.

The top-down, control-the-message strategy worked in the past for a few reasons:

• Media companies were complicit in not embarrassing the people they counted on to appear on their shows and authorize their licenses.
• Politicians could decide where and when to show up and could choose whether or not they wanted to engage.
• Bad news didn’t spread far unless it was exceptionally juicy. Especially if included sex, corruption, or people dying.

One of the key cornerstones of traditional political marketing has been to just change the communication. Use different positions for different target segments, if only they can find that sweet spot in the marketing communications mix they could finally reach their audience. This has been noted in a recent globe article:

Canadian politicos are fascinated by the campaign's use of social networking.

“There's eight million Canadian accounts … on Facebook,” says Nammi Poorooshasb, federal New Democrat director of communications.

“We've been looking at ways to mobilize these people in those communities.”

Sure they may be 9 million plus people on facebook but how many of them are identified with any political party? Or even care to hear about traditional ideas from traditional political parties? Judging by the numbers (and my own network) very few.

You can change the message, tactics, promotion, and marketing channels and add as many hot toppings of social media to be "with it" - but you will fail.

The dream has been simple for Canadian political parties: if we can just enough of today's hot web marketing everything else will be take care of itself.

The reason why people (especially youth) are not involved in politics isn't because of the lack of promotion to youth or to whatever market; it's because new media marketing can only work if you choose to reorganize your organization.

That is moving from a top down approach to a bottom up, whereby a party is a collaborator not a messenger. Whereby a political party realizes they no longer control the message and need a grassroots (different tribes if you will) to do their communicating for them. Where those tribes actually participate in creating party policy that is binding on the party to adopt - not sweep under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. Where real meaningful change of structure and responsiveness can occur and by ordinary members.

People don't stay around too long when they don't feel wanted or worse - can't find meaningful work to do.

It's not the marketing that brings about transformation, it's the organizations structure, values, and ideas. It's how easy it is for the grassroots members can easily do participate with a political party. That is, people of all types can become involved and actually see the change the wish to see. This means no centralized power around the leaders office, no old boys club, and no ignoring the grassroots when they speak up.

Right now no Canadian political party doesn't embody this approach . There is no uniform message and worse - they're still using traditional structures to grow their party base, win votes, and try to form government.

Just as technology propelled certain organizations through the industrial revolutions, new marketing can drive the right organization through the digital revolution.

It's a wonder when we do go to vote, we end up voting for more of the same.