Thanks to Yin for the flag.
Angus
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November 11, 2009
Twittering away in the echo chamber
Thanks to Yin for the flag.
Angus
February 18, 2009
Tweet Branding
Everyone is all a Twitter of late, so thank you to Sam Phillips for forwarding me a blog post that touched on the question of how brands can best use Twitter.
Twitter is interesting from a targeting and Influence perspective. There are your friends you follow, people like Stephen Fry who 205k follow, those that like to shout out their views and those that just like to sit back and listen. Understanding who is doing what and how they influence others is going to be more and more valuable to us.
There are some purists out there that will argue that brands have no place on Twitter because it is all about people to people communication, but as Cohen (@obilon on Twitter), a writer and social media strategist points out on mashable, Twitter is opt in, so there is no reason why brands and people can't live side by side. If you chose to opt in, it simply demonstrates the level of Permission you have given a company to speak to you.
As Seth Godin would no doubt tell you though, the important thing about Permission Marketing is that when someone has given you permission to talk to them, it needs to be very carefully managed, valued, and not wasted. Smart brands use it in ways that are meaningful, adding value to peoples lives. With this in mind, the blog sent has kindly summarised 40 of the best Branded Twitter campaigns for us to learn from.
The examples highlight that like people, brands have personalities too. In short, the Twitter community will decide whether you are worth following or not, so here's a few tips:
1) Learn from those doing it well
2) Be relevant, interesting, entertaining and informative
3) Don't just talk about your brand, think about related topics that will interest people
4) Be human, not corporate
- Sam
February 16, 2009
Generation Gizajob
There is a common belief that a recession hits young people less than their elders. The thinking going that they are more likely to live with their parents, have no dependants (although that is not always the case) and are less likely to have a mortgage. However these latest findings from GfK NOP's Consumer confidence barometer suggest that their overall consumer confidence is as low as the rest of the population, probably fuelled recently by job loss headlines.
The confidence of Gen Y has probably been fuelled by job security and economic confidence, being a generation too young to witness the last recession. Maybe now this will change and we'll see a different generation with different attitudes.
Stephen
June 18, 2008
Wellies are for life, not just for festivals
I was in New York recently and what did I see? Wellies, that's what. Well to be clear, I noticed lots of incredibly stylish individuals in and around Soho, Greenwich and the Meat Packing District wearing them. At the time I chuckled to myself. The fools I thought. It was only later when I found myself holding a pair in my hands, that I realised I was actually jealous that in no way I could pull it off. Miserable about this, you'll be pleased to know that I balanced things up, by buying myself some bright blue sunglasses that made me look 12.
I thought I'd put this behind me, until it was bought back to my attention in a meeting I had the other day, when Michael Tulley, a trend guru at OMD UK, was talking about subculture making it's way in to the mainstream. Intrigued by this I went to the site of The Sartorialist himself, and he too has noticed the high Street Wellie.
Clearly they are a must for festivals, and it is no surprise that designers now produce them for those that want to stand out from the crowd. What is interesting is that it is now bridging over in to every day life. It reminds me of the Hush Puppies case Gladwell spoke about in the Tipping Point. People wearing wellies down the high street and in bars is a sign of what is to come. As Nassim Nichola Taleb would say, it is an example of a black swan.
I am heading to my mum's in the country this weekend. She will be delighted to hear that she is so cutting edge. Go Mum.
She'll be less delighted when she finds her Wellies have been stolen by her son.
Sam
June 06, 2008
Free love
Why are we so irrational when it comes to our love of Free?
I'm currently reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely the behavioural economist. It's very good by the way. It's basically a summary of lots of social experiments that he and some of his colleagues have undertaken to demonstrate how expectations, emotions, social norms and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities and show how irrational rather than rational consumer behaviour can be. One chapter focuses on our love of Free. His view is that "free us gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is". Here are two examples he gives.
The first was an experiment that was conducted in a large public building offering Lindt chocolate truffles for sale at 15 cents or Hershey's Kisses for sale at 1 cent (both being at a much lower price than their normal retail price, the Lindt truffle being a better quality than the more everyday Hersey's Kiss) - with a limit of one chocolate per person. The result: 73% chose the Lindt truffle and 27% chose the Kiss. Next they moved the experiment on by dropping the price of each by 1 cent, the Lindt becoming 14 cents and the Hershey's Kiss became free. What happened? 69% of customers chose the free Kiss, opting to pass on buying a Lindt truffle at a very good price. Basically when Free was on the agenda the customers behaved in a much more irrational way. To ensure that the results weren't influenced by not having to get out your wallet, the experiment was repeated next to a till where people were buying something in any case producing similar results.
The second example was analysing Amazon's free postage offer. Now I'm hooked on this to the extent that I nearly always buy extra books to make sure I qualify for their free postage and it seems like I'm far from the only one. It turns out that Amazon were running this offer in every country they operate in with the exception of France where they were running a similar incentive scheme but in this instance the shipping cost was the equivalent of about 10p rather than Free. Now 10p is a pretty good offer, but one that was virtually ignored by the French. However this all changed when the offer was aligned with the rest of the world and turned to Free - a drop in 10pence, but a significant uptake in the offer.
What does this mean for brands? Well the model works for mobile phone operators and retailers and appears to still work with laptops for The Carphone Warehouse. Some people may also have heard about this free gun offer when you buy a car which has gone down a storm for one car dealership in the US. More on it in the video below:
It looks like brands should at least consider reframing their retail offers to incorporate Free, could start to incorporate more imaginative Free incentives or at least could test where free fits in in their market. The alternative might be to be drawn into discounting mainly on price which of course could create an ugly race to the bottom which no one is likely to win in the long-term.
Stephen
PS: To get a feel for the rest of the book you can that this How irrational or rational are you? test.
May 23, 2008
Reframing value
This isn't just any value... this is M&S value.
M&S are currently running a promotion in store (and promoted on TV) where you can buy a dinner for 2 for £10 this weekend; basically comprising of a bottle of wine and a starter, main course and dessert all for 2. Now compare this offer with the equivalant at Tesco's or Sainsbury's and this doesn't look that much of a bargain; but change the comparison to eating out at a restaurant as M&S have done and this looks amazing value.
A few observations this promotion: First is that when brands are communicating value it can pay to reframe the value beyond (i.e higher than) the category they are in. This avoids getting into direct price comparisons which can lead to a downward spiral that isn't worth fighting. In a way this is basically what many successful brands are trying to do with their brand communication - reframe beyond the category or their main competition- Lynx as an aphrodisiac rather than a deodorant, Apple makes creativity easier (or says "I'm creative") or even the Citroen C5 saying it's German. The second observation is that successful retailers these days (whether in troubled times or not) appear to be trying lots more new techniques to bring in footfall (and subsequent sales) beyond the typical sales periods, all of which makes our job much more interesting.
Stephen
May 22, 2008
May 19, 2008
Losing His Virginity
I went to sit in the crowd at the London Business Forum interview with Richard Branson last week and thought I would share some insights gained from the experience. Love him or hate him (few in the latter I imagine), the interview was enjoyable. It was one of those expensive experiences that don't leave you with all the answers to business, but do leave you enthused.
Q - How have you managed to keep a 'challenger culture'?
A - By empowering people. He spoke of when they first started the company and it grew to around 100 people. At that point he believed that it was getting too big, so they split the company in two and established separate offices for each, with a new MD etc. They have kept doing this ever since, keeping the challenger 'David versus Goliath' culture alive and empowering people in the process.
Q - Do you write and respond to emails yourself?
A - Branson clearly didn't 'get didge'. You couldn't even call him a digital immigrant, for he'd had his first computer lesson the week before the interview and openly stated that he didn't send or read emails himself.
Q - Where does he focus his attention these days?
A - 60% social issues and 40% business.
Q - Three things he felt keep people motivated and enthused?
A - Responsibility, passion for what you believe in and parties
Q - What do you want to do when you retire?
A - His immediate response was that he never wanted to retire. He said that he did not want to waste his privileged position. He wanted to spend his time doing all he could to try and make a difference.
Q - What is a business?
A - He spoke of the preoccupation business people have with balance sheets, profit and loss. He said that he still didn't understand the difference between net and gross and stated his belief that a companies prime role was not about making money. Business was about the act of creation. It was about passionately believing in something and then trying to do it better than others. Profit was just the by product that helps you try new projects.
Q - What are his key strengths as a manager?
A - He liked to think of himself as a people person and a good listener. He spoke of always looking for the best in people, never the worst, stating that too many managers spend their time waiting for people to slip up. A positive culture is one that lets people realise their own mistakes, rather than highlighting them.
Q - What makes a new project interesting to you?
A - If it immediately excites him, it is being done poorly at the moment, and if it sounds like fun
Q - Is Virgin in danger of stretching the brand too far?
A - 'Every time I have started a new venture we have been told we have gone too far'.
Q - How have you kept growing through down turns?
A - He felt that a down turn was an opportunity. If you sat back you made the doom a self fulfilling prophecy. His belief was that you need to keep investing and expanding.
Q - When will you be offering the public trips to outer space?
A - In three years time, once he and his family have gone up on the first flight.
Aside from the above, the thing that stuck out was just how laid back and likeable he is. Clearly he is a people person who cares passionately about both his company and wider social issues. Cynics will have wanted to catch him out in some way, but small points like him coyly answering his mobile phone in front of a crowd of 500 business people would have frustrated them. He could have rejected the call, but didn't, he answered it and spoke to the person asking if he could call back.
If the above is all a little too sickening for you, then you won't like his response to the final question either..
Q - So thank you Richard, your time had been much appreciated by all. One final question we thought would be entertaining - you are sitting opposite Alan Sugar on The Apprentice. He points his finger at you in his demeaning way and asks "So Richard, why should I not fire you?"
A - (Branson laughs and then gives a small pause for thought) "Because if you do fire me, I will compete against you".
All too often we Brits like to knock down our business heroes, but there's far worse things you could do than read his biography. If there was ever a case for a person that makes things happen, it is he.
Sam
May 08, 2008
Minority Report
If you read Graeme Paton’s article on the front cover of the Telegraph last week, you will know that 800,000 school children in the UK do not speak English as their first language. This figure accounts for one in seven (14.4%) of primary school kids and 10.8% of secondary school kids.
The rise is coming from the number of school kids from immigrant families. Their numbers have doubled in a decade and in some areas the kids account for over half of the school pupils. In Tower Hamlets for example, only 23% of pupils speak English as a first language at home, with the figure for the whole of inner London primary schools being under 50%.
The rapid expansion is naturally causing schools a challenge, but the article reminded me of the challenge it is creating for communications as well. A while back our head of TV, Neil Johnson, flagged the issue to me and the article made me want to share it wider.
The conversation I had with Neil related to the effect it was having on our kids’ clients. After all, if 1 in 7 of your target are not watching English TV, reading English press or visiting English websites at home, then clearly we have a problem/opportunity. That said it is not just a consideration for kids clients, it affects all, as the changing population isn’t solely down to massive influx of independent five year olds leaving their families and homeland for education abroad!
Look around the average office in town and I am guessing we are not the most representative bunch, and this is part to explain why clients have been slow to tap in to the opportunity.
To be successful, we can’t just put the existing message out to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. If you look in a foreign press title you will see straight away how an ad designed for the Sun or Telegraph sticks out like a sore thumb. It will take a genuine commitment from clients and agencies to understand the target and then speak to them on their terms and in their language.
Obviously this is a challenge, but with a potential one in seven of your target being largely neglected, those that are brave will certainly reap the rewards.
Sam