dealing with digital disruption

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Is there nowhere the Top Gear brand can’t go?
Full marks for lateral opportunism and carrying through their trademark irreverent wit

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In a previous post, I discussed how switched-on stars are using social media to side-step unwanted spin.

Today, TheNextWeb have a revealing story showing actor Ashton Kutcher to be even more cutting edge: he used live streaming mobile service Qik to record the baiting of paparazzi as he and his wife Demi Moore arrived at an airport.

As well as being a sobering insight into the flipside of celeb life, the skirmish shows how the balance of power is shifting between brands, media and consumers. By presenting footage openly to fans, Ashton and Demi make it harder for anyone to misprepresent them. Smart.

This matters to regular products too, especially those in ‘controversial’ categories such as oil, fast food or where marketing to children is concerned. In these cases, ensuring your side of the story gets across untainted is vital.

But mainstream brands often struggle with social channels and many simply opt out. Conversations about them still happen, pictures still get posted and opinions still get formed – it’s just that they’re not involved.

It needn’t be difficult. If you’re transparent, conversational and, most of all authentic with your use of new media, you stand a much better chance of being heard.

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When the 800lb gorilla in your market brings out a product close to yours, it’s gonna hurt. Especially when theirs is free.

Which is why I admire Spanning Sync. They’re a funky software outfit who’ve been quietly sync’ing up Apple and Google Calendars for a small fee for some time. Suddenly, things have got a bit noisier with Google announcing a service that brushes ominously past their territory.

Spanning Sync could have been forgiven a few reflective days to chew over their response, but instead had their blog post up in a flash. They were “very excited about” the news and happily linked through to Google’s page.

This is a really smart move. How many traditional companies would ever even mention the name of competing products outside of closed boardrooms? To actively tell your closest customers about them is certainly contrary – and absolutely the right thing to do.

1. Control the agenda
Geek news travels reallllly fast. By competing to bring this information to their customers before they heard it elsewhere, Spanning Sync gained the chance to influence the positioning.

2. Champion the category
By welcoming Google’s product, Spanning Sync looked magnamimous, confident and like fellow fans of the sector.

3. Point out your edge
Spanning Sync were sure to convincingly point out the differences and benefits of their offering – without coming across as churlish.

4. Be prepared
The speed of Spanning Sync’s blog posting indicates that they were ready for this day. Having thought-through tactics for market eventualities is smart. At Guinness in the 90s we developed shadow brand plans to game what competitors might do.

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As Britain gets giddy with it’s once-a-decade proper snowfall, it’s nice to see enterprising brands having fun and creating free marketing.

Here’s a snow sofa (or ’snofa’) created by mydeco in Hyde Park.

And Innocent Drinks are joining in the spirit by publicising a Twitter snowball fight

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Looks like this joke from the IT Crowd kinda came true today when they flagged the whole internet as badware

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I recently found two pieces of viral marketing that I commissioned at lastminute.com around 2002/2003.

The Office Flirt Test

The idea was to mash up the Excel-based quizzes doing the email rounds in those days and the “how sexy are you” questionnaires omnipresent in women’s magazines – no-one can resist finding out just how fabulous they are.

The fact that the generated flirt profile was 100% random (irrespective of the boxes ticked) just made it all the more marvellous.

Office Flirt Test was conceived and written by Jon Davie and myself. It cost £10 all-in (for the URL) and generated over ten million visits.

Disco Squirrels

The marketing team had loved the then-new breed of barmy animations doing the rounds (especially this one) and wanted to do something similar – again for Valentine’s Day . I commissioned Rob Manuel of b3ta fame to generate something that was both noticeable and loved-up. The result was the quite extraordinary Disco Squirrels…

Learnings I took from these experiences:

1. Gotta make the sender look cool
   Virals only propogate if the person emailing it thinks the recipient will think them that bit cooler for introducing them to something remarkable
2. Hard to repeat
   We tried to follow up the flirt test with something similar six weeks later. It went nowhere.
3. Keep an ear to the ground
   Good marketing always taps into emerging memes – so subscribe to lots of quirky webfeeds.
4. Push the boundaries
   Both of the ideas would never have got through blinkered management or focus groups. Sometimes you’ve just got to take a flyer. Remember – the great thing about viral marketing is that if it’s rubbish, no-one will know.
   I always loved this unhinged techno remix of the Michael Winner e-sure ad. At the time I was managing the Johnny Vaughan launch campaign and still wish I’d given our Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner ad the same treatment.
5. Product viral
   Truly effective viral marketing is not something separate – it’s embedded in the product. A good example is how “sent from my iPhone” is appended to every email.
   The sender doesn’t mind the marketing message as it tells everyone “Look I’ve got an iPhone! Me!!”

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Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry hesitantly introducing Twitter to five million Brits will surely lead to more companies taking the leap into social media.

And no-one will care.

Simply ‘being on facebook’, ‘having a blog’  or ‘getting a Twitter account’ won’t make your brand cool. In fact, get it wrong and it’ll be brand negative – like your dad dancing. Wearing a baseball cap. On backwards.

This is not because new media is a voodoo understood only by the geekorati. Far from it. As always, it’s about applying brand basics to new opportunties.

1. Own the category

Good brands know all about laying claim to the broader territory they operate in. It shows confidence, assumes leadership and educates consumers and customers alike.

Let’s say you sell coffee. Don’t make your blog just about your product activity. That might be fascinating to your colleagues, but not to the rest of us. Broaden your thinking and write about great coffee generally. About the bean growing process, about the best home espresso makers, about the Sunday papers and capuccino moment.

2. Know your brand

You know that old exercise about “if this brand were a car, what would it be” or “if it were a film”? Well, you’re going to need to know the answer to these questions. Knowing your brand’s tone of voice and view on the world is essential if you’re going to convincingly take part in online conversations. Southwest Airlines and Dell are getting it right.

3. Be where your customers are

It’s good to have a forum on your website and engage with people. But it’s better to be elsewhere too. You should come across as passionate and really taking part in the community. Practically, this means taking part in conversations wherever they happen, not just on your doorstep.

Get involved in whichever forums your customers use, no matter who runs them. But that does mean genuinely making a contribution, not just talking up your products. It’s the difference between being a gatecrasher and taking beer to the party.

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Placed in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Jan 21. Thanks to David Beath for the heads up.

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In the same way there’s rarely a time when a flat tyre wouldn’t be inconvenient, it’s rarely true that “now is a good time to speak” when an agency cold calls.

Like most marketers, I’ve taken hundreds, if not thousands, of introductory calls. I respect the individuals who do this as it’s a tough gig, and I’ve often thought about what works and what doesn’t in my experience.

Don’t

• Read from a script. Don’t even have a script. Unless you’ve got Robert de Niro working your contact list, it’ll come across inauthentic and unconvincing.
• Have the same play for every target. Delivering award-winning DM work for a midlands council won’t strike much of a chord with software retailers.
• Be too chummy (“hello mate, how was your weekend”) or too flattering (“I know you’re a busy executive”)
• Ask open-ended, over-familiar questions, “what are your strategic objectives for the next 12 months?”. They’re not going to tell you (and they might not even know themselves).

Do

• Get to the point. A polite, expedient manner acknowledges that the client’s time is valuable, but so is yours. That makes you worth listening to.
• Know the brand and its issues. This means more than a quick Google, but a real think about what the client will be worrying about and why your agency is specifically, demonstrably suited to help – “we’ve seen this situation before and we were able to…”
• Have an opinion. It’s OK to challenge and show confidence – just build on it and end up with a way forward not a dead end disagreement.
• Be persistent. Much as I hesitate to say this, it is true that calling back time and time again works. Just do it with a touch of humour a tone that says it’d be simply criminal if we didn’t at least hear each other out
• Have some work to present. There is nothing more powerful than already having work you want to show. “Don’t think us presumptive, but we’ve mocked up a campaign idea for you. Just give us 10 minutes any time this week and we’ll show it to you, no strings attached.”

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I sometimes hesitate to bang on about how revolutionary Twitter is as a communications platform. It’s almost becoming a cliche, and lauding 140 characters of plain text can come across as an overclaim.

But when you see how the medium excels with breaking news stories like this (and thankfully, early reports are that everyone got off the plane safely), the potency of immediate sharing by anyone with a mobile – including pictures – becomes clear.

In the 7 minutes it’s taken me to write this post, over 2,100 people have posted tweets incorporating the word plane.