Author Archives: David Armano
(Ford’s Scott Monty surrounded by Edelman Execs on the Red Carpet)
I recently wrapped up a week in Paris mixing a bit of both business and pleasure. The first two days of my week were spent at the third annual Marketing 2.0 conference held in Paris for the second time in a row. While the structure of the conference was a bit loose and the wifi nearly non-existent, the event itself was excellent and one of the better events I’ve been to in a while. I credit the planning that went into hand picking a very interesting and diverse set of speakers and case studies ranging from companies such as Nike, Lego, Southwest Airlines, Jagermeister, Virgin, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and Facebook and Ebay just to name a few. I spoke on a panel with Steven Erich from Crispin on the second day of the event. The event was intimate, with just about 200 attendees from all over the world. This also added to the strength of it. Coming off the heels of SXSW, it was nice to be a part of something smaller, the content was very digestible because of it. Here’s a few highlights that stood out to me.
Embracing Your Brand’s “Freaks”
Konnie Kalcher from Lego (Lego means play well in Danish if you put the words together) talked about how the company has from a culture that believed it understood it’s product the best, to one that works less in silos and has begun embracing their most fervant brand fans, and engaging them through programs such as the Lugnut enthusiast community. This was probably the one aspect of the talk that stood out to me and it apparently struck a chord with others as well. As Konnie’s talk turned to questions, the word “freak” was being bantered around to describe some of the hard core Lego enthusiasts. In fact, there are some people who do spend nearly there entire days obsessing about nothing but Legos. But Konnie’s story was one of a brand that realized that there is more value in harnessing the energy of “Lego freaks” vs. ignoring them. Their input is now included in product development—something that Lego hasn’t done in the past. Now think about this—Lego is one of the few brands out there that is actively engaging their fans in the creation of their products. This goes well beyond the marketing of the product and directly in the the design of it, if not influencing the culture of their business. This is something that trancends marketing as most people tend to think of it.
Video by @matto
This is my first attempt at writing anything since attending the SXSW conference for the first time—it was quite an experience, from the panels to the parties to the conversations in the hallways, cafes and sidewalks. I spoke on a couple of panels but there was something really special about the “Friendship is Dead” salon that friend Russ Unger and myself “moderated”. I use the term loosely because it felt like a casual conversation more than anything else. Some even joked around about it feeling like “therapy”.
We started off the panel with the premise of friendship in the basic sense and quickly moved into social media territory. It became clear that few people in the room felt that there is a need for social applications to offer better controls around how we can classify “friends”—from those who we may have met online, to the ones we work with to the ones we’ve known from childhood that may ore may not be close with anymore. The conversation quickly moved into a very organic space where many of us felt the need to express opinions on the subject, and were clearly wrestling with the notion of managing our relationships as they soar into higher and higher numbers. If you reference “Dunbar’s Number” (below), there is an assertion that once we exceed the number of relationships past “150″, that our relationships become less meaningful and more difficult to manage.
Related Links:
Wall Street Journal & WSJ part 2
USA Today
MediaPost
LA Times
Gawker
Financial Times
Fox News
Yes, it was originally advertising agency Modernista! that threw away their Website in favor of simply patching together all of their information across various social networks and services. Nearly a year later, Skittles has done the same thing. If you point your Web browser to Skittles.com, you will not be greeted by the familiar sight of a highly “experiential” or branded site complete with games and promotions—instead, you will go to a Twitter search result page that shows you what people are saying about the brand in real time.
The “siteless website” then places a “widget” above the Twitter search result and lets you navigate to other destinations, mostly distributed across the Web, from product pages on Facebook, to video channels on You Tube, to simple product information on Wikipedia and don’t forget photos on Flickr.
While I would not recommend agencies or professional services firms to go the Modernista! route (people aren’t talking about you like they are about products)—this is an interesting tactic and raises a few issues. For one, as Modernista! has taught us, you can’t fool around with your Wikipedia entry. And secondarily, the tactic is still experimental. (currently Skittles requires you to enter your date of birth every time you visit the “site”—a less than ideal experience probably caused by a tech glitch.)
Another reason this is worth watching closely is because we’re seeing a social media reality play out in real time. While you can listen in on, respond to and potentially even influence conversations—you cannot control them. Currently, pointing your browser to Skittles.com will also result in some profanity showing up (via Twitter). Note: Skittles does have age verification in place, as mentioned earlier but you can see the updates behind it.
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A while back, I wrote a white paper called “The Collective Is The Focus Group”. A version of it was printed in BusinessWeek as well. The general point? Consumers can get feedback to any brand in real time—networks amplify what they have to say and sentiment spreads at light speed. Companies need now have to listen, learn, and adapt at all phases of an initiative.
So today as I’m flipping through the New York Times, I come a across an article describing how a micro-groundswell began against Tropicana’s package re-design. As it turns out, Tropicana consumers not only care about it—their most loyal consumers do.
“It was not the volume of the outcries that led to the corporate
change of heart, Mr. Campbell said, because “it was a fraction of a
percent of the people who buy the product.”
Rather,
the criticism is being heeded because it came, Mr. Campbell said in a
telephone interview on Friday, from some of “our most loyal consumers.”
The article spcifies that most feedback came in through fairly traditional means including e-mail and phonecalls—but one specific thought in the article caught my attention:
“Twitter is the ultimate focus group,” Mr. Shankman said. “I can post
something and in a minute get feedback from 700 people around the
world, giving me their real opinions.”
When we were pitching the adidas business as Riot, a part of our vision was the ability to create content that could live anywhere tapping multiple networks as they are designed for the distribution of media. Another part of our strategy was creating spaces where that media could be aggregated. So as the NBA Allstar weekend approaches, it’s great to see some of that vision coming to fruition.
If you are a fan of Dwight Howard, you should really check out this site we’ve designed specifically for the event. We’ll be updating it with photos, videos and even Tweets from Dwight himself. Media will be uploaded to destinations such as Flickr and YouTube and the site simply sucks it all into one place and allows you to see it at a glance while giving you the option to go directly to the source on their respective networks. And yes, the page even scrolls. A sight for sore eyes.
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Hot on the heels of fellow Digital Agency Razorfish’s report on The Digital Mom (worth a read), we recently launched an initiative with Mercedes Benz which taps into the idea of Mom as influencer-in-chief in more ways than one. While “blogger outreach” programs are nothing new, (PR firms have been conducting them for some time), there is something to the idea of putting your product and brand in the hands of a real person who’s got an audience willing to listen and letting them say what they want.
Amy Allen fits the profile of the Gen X Mom who not only would consider purchasing a car like the Mercedes GLK, but influences all the purchases her family makes, not to mention the influence she has within her own community of peers. With several thousand followers on Twitter and blog that discusses the realities of all things mom related—Amy Allen is an uber “Digital Mom” who’s savvy about products, motherhood and wired to the teeth.
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