The one number you need to grow

Is the title of a paper written by Frederick F. Reicheld Director Emeritus of consulting firm Bain & Co Reicheld argues that customer advocacy is the one number you need to grow. I was prompted to reflect on the paper after reading Justin Kirbys article Global alternative marketing themes

Justin says

Good mainstream advertising can still be effective – if it connects with consumers. It’s connecting with consumers to create conversations that’s now the holy grail of marketing, not the Heinz 57 varieties of alternative techniques used to reach them.

And you don’t need a panel of hundreds of thousands to create conversations and connect with consumers

Justin outlines issues facing marketers, how do I choose from the plethora of marketing communication channels now available? how do I engage? What are the metrics in this new world order?

It’s also about using both alternative and traditional media in an innovative way that enables consumers to see brands as more than just advertisers, creating conversations that connect consumers with brand

Justin argues that by engaging passionate fans of a brand, or creating simple engagement marketing initiatives, one can create communities that for short or extended periods are prepared to put their minds to work for mutual benefit.

But the principal point it is a dialogue amongst all stakeholders. Which ultimately should lead to customer advocacy.

Justin again,

In the end, you’ve got to have either a stunning product that sells itself, or buzzable creative ideas that connect with consumers to help amplify and accelerate word of mouth. Just remember, it may not be your (tr)ad agency that comes up with that good idea – it could be any one of your marketing partners, and possibly after brainstorming with all stakeholders including your influential customers

Justin, you are just too hot today.

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Posted in: Engagement Marketing

The One number you need to grow

Is the title of a paper written by Frederick F. Reicheld Director Emeritus of consulting firm Bain & Co Reicheld argues that customer advocacy is the one number you need to grow. I was prompted to reflect on the paper after reading Justin Kirbys article Global alternative marketing themes
Justin says

Good mainstream advertising can still be effective – if it connects with consumers. It's connecting with consumers to create conversations that's now the holy grail of marketing, not the Heinz 57 varieties of alternative techniques used to reach them.
And you don't need a panel of hundreds of thousands to create conversations and connect with consumers

Justin outlines issues facing marketers, how do I choose from the plethora of marketing communication channels now available? how do I engage? What are the metrics in this new world order?

It's also about using both alternative and traditional media in an innovative way that enables consumers to see brands as more than just advertisers, creating conversations that connect consumers with brand

Justin argues that by engaging passionate fans of a brand, or creating simple engagement marketing initiatives, one can create communities that for short or extended periods are prepared to put their minds to work for mutual benefit.
But the principal point it is a dialogue amongst all stakeholders. Which ultimately should lead to customer advocacy.
Justin again,

In the end, you've got to have either a stunning product that sells itself, or buzzable creative ideas that connect with consumers to help amplify and accelerate word of mouth. Just remember, it may not be your (tr)ad agency that comes up with that good idea – it could be any one of your marketing partners, and possibly after brainstorming with all stakeholders including your influential customers

Justin is CEO of Digital Media Communications

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Posted in: Engagement Marketing, Ethics, Marketing, Participation, Philosophy, Society, Trends

postmodern engagement marketing vs. modern interruptive marketing

David Wolfe at Agelessmarketing posts on engagement marketing mentioning our book, Communities Dominate Brands

The new way is engagement marketing, very much a reflection of The Experience Economy?s authors Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore?s dictum that ?the experience is the marketing.? Moore and Ahonen clearly understand that provider and consumer can each better meet their respective objectives when they are co-creators in product development and marketing processes. Bilateralism versus unilateralism marks the differences between postmodern engagement marketing and modern interruptive marketing.

Yet, the marketing communications industry is still overwhelmingly wedded to the one-way kind of thinking that underlies the interruptive marketing model. And the more that marketers working in that old school way of thinking try to make interruptive marketing work, the more apparent the poverty of their thinking is.

An astonishing number of big name brands are in trouble: Coke, Disney, GM, HP, Daimler-Chrysler, Wendy?s and even Playboy are leading examples. Some may argue these brands are suffering more because of management missteps than because of poorly executed marketing . However that only emphasizes a core weakness of modern management: placement of functional specialties in different silos.

Had the management of those brands kept their companies in alignment through and through with changes in consumer behavior they would not be on everybody?s short list of troubled brands.

It is very insightful about the state of the nation of marketing, business and media. Putting the customer first requires more than lip seervice to that notion.

Also worth a read cognitive paparazzi by Adriana Cronin-Lukas

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Posted in: Engagement Marketing

Mass market, smart content?

Jackie Danicki at the Big Blog Company and posting on Samizdata raised some interesting issues about the the future of commercial TV in a post Digital Killed the Broadcast Star
Jackie is in LA at the moment and was attending a panel Q&A session with the American Cinema Foundation at the American Film Institute in LA. The theme "mass market, smart content." I wish I had been there. 

The kicker being, I do not believe that advertising revenue is going to be the bread and butter of TV on cable, satellite, and the internet. Sure, there will be ads in the world as long as there are lazy, clueless companies who believe in "just in case" marketing. But the costs of that kind of marketing are rising, the effectiveness declining, and profits down as a result.
Which brings us to my point: This drive to niche dovetails very nicely with the need of companies to put customers at the beginning of the value chain instead of at the end of it. The increasing emphasis on the individual also means a move from push marketing to engagement marketing. So instead of wasting a great deal of money on a TV ad, a company can spend a fraction of that on, say, developing great blogs to provide value and engage the niche they are targetting. (They can throw some podcasts up there while they are at it.)
So here is the question I really wish I had asked the panel: Ten years from now, who exactly is going to be spending the kind of money on network TV ads that they need to maintain this broken system? And if that money isn't there, will you be running over non-TV-watching freaks with your Kia instead of your Mercedes?

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Posted in: Advertising, Broadcast, Convergence, Darwin, Economics, Marketing, Media, Networks, Trends

Innovation through the community

My co-author and friend Tomi Ahonen gave me an article from the economist yesterday called

The future of innovation. The rise of the creative consumer

I read it and then to Tomi’s astonishment did some energetic breakdance moves whilst saying “YEAH BABY, YEAH.” Now why did I do that?

Because the article discusses how online communites are engaging with a whole raft of businesses to develop either physical of virtual products. And is of course another verification of the thesis contained within our book Communities Dominate Brands

Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers and it putting several of them into production. Electronic Arts, a maker of of computer games, ships programming tools to its customers, posts their modifications online and works their creations into new games. And so on. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product development manager, too.

It is common sense in many ways. As we believe at SMLXL that nobody is as clever as everybody. The article mentions a new book, “Democratising Innovation” in which the author Eric von Hippel argues that the rise of online communities, combined with the creation and wide access to powerful and easy- to-use design tools has powered this phenomenon into the maiinstream as never before.

Right back in history circa 1996 a game developer in LA first noticed how gamers were working on improving the game “Red Alert” themselves and then posting these on fan websites. The Economist reports that Westwood the game company decided to embrace this rather than try to ringfence it and shut it down. The result a very powerful ongoing R&D relationship between gamers and the company.

Today we are in a world where customers are demanding more and more and always different manifestations of value+

By engaging a community of passionate and loyal fans within an innovation process is essentially a win-win, and there is evidence that community led innovations have a far greater chance of success than the traditional process, which focus groups itself into mediocrity.

We have seen on a global scale how understanding a community and engaging that community is far more sensible and dare I say profitable than ignoring it.

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Posted in: Trends

Nobody is as clever as everybody

My co-author and friend Tomi Ahonen gave me an article from the economist yesterday called
The future of innovation. The rise of the creative consumer

The article discusses how online communities are engaging with a whole raft of businesses to develop either physical of virtual products. And is of course another verification of the thesis contained within our book Communities Dominate Brands

Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers and it putting several of them into production. Or that Electronic Arts, a maker of of computer games, ships programming tools to its customers, posts their modifications online and works their creations into new games. And so on. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product development manager, too.

It is common sense in many ways – as nobody is as clever as everybody. The article mentions a new book, "Democratising Innovation " in which the author Eric von Hippel (Open Innovation) argues that the rise of online communities, combined with the creation and wide access to powerful and easy- to-use design tools has powered this phenomenon into the mainstream as never before.
Right back in history circa 1996 a game developer in LA first noticed how gamers were working on improving the game "Red Alert" themselves and then posting these on fan websites.

The Economist reports that Westwood the game company decided to embrace this rather than try to ring-fence it and shut it down. The result a very powerful ongoing R&D relationship between gamers and the company.
Today we are in a world where customers are demanding more and more and always different manifestations of value+
By engaging a community of passionate and loyal fans within an innovation process is essentially a win-win, and there is evidence that community led innovations have a far greater chance of success than the traditional process, which focus groups itself into mediocrity.
We have seen on a global scale how understanding a community and engaging that community is far more sensible and dare I say profitable than ignoring it.

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Posted in: Culture, Darwin, Economics, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Research, Engagement Sciences, Participation, Philosophy, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, Web/Tech

Building brands through a community

My good friend Adriana at the Big Blog Company flipped a link over to me today aboout building a brand via a blog and a community, which I wished we could have shoehorned into our book Communities Dominate Brands .

From the loiclemeur blog which I think worth quoting heavily from

The French entrepreneur Patrice Cassard redefines ecommerce by entirely basing its sales on the word of mouth his products and blog create. To my knowledge, he does not buy any advertising and sales are soaring.

You only have to read his Movable Type blog and how many comments he has to understand the community of t-shirt fans he has created. Patrice’s readers participate in everything, they give their advise and suggestions, they create trust around an unknown brand for new site visitors by the quality of the comments.

There is more. Patrice has just relaunched his ecommerce shop to integrate his customers in the t-shirt creation process. Anybody can propose a new t-shirt visual, which is then submitted to vote. The best logos are produced on t-shirts and the authors get 300 euros for each of them.

La Fraise customers are in the center of the company and define the new products. Amazing experience that shows us the path to new e-commerce around blogs and conversations, with trust and customer feedback as the two key drivers of business. The word of mouth does the rest.

So go and check out La Fraise

If anyone out there believes that today we can ignore communities, or that we cannot create them I suggest they pause for thought. Because this is happening at so many levels that it demonstrates that our insights at SMLXL are correct. Markets are conversations and the role of what we describe as GenC or the community generation is a theory based today on reality.

This turns conventional branding and marketing on its head. How many times have I said that – I feel like a broken wheel. But if the Vice Chairman at General motors blogs because he knows he has a wider community he has to engage with, as well as the COO of Sun Microsysytems Jonathan Schwartz or Robert Scoble of Microsoft. If the Boeing World design team numbering 150,000 people contributing as a community into a commercial project. These are indications that we are witnessing a paradigm shift at many levels.

What is branding? What is media and who controls it? How do you go to market? How do you build your business model? Who are your stakeholders/community? There many more.

One has to understand that today ‘the community’ has the potential and capability to be a potent force that changes how we interact with eachother.
And how we do business. And this has as much to do with traditional bricks and mortar businesses with industrial age business models, as it has with any body else.

If I were a brand I would be sitting and thinking who is my community and how can I engage with them before someone else does?

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Posted in: Engagement Marketing

Building a brand through a community

My good friend Adriana at the Big Blog Company flipped a link over to me today about building a brand via a blog and a community, which I wished we could have shoehorned into our book Communities Dominate Brands.
From the loiclemeur blog 

The French entrepreneur Patrice Cassard redefines ecommerce by entirely basing its sales on the word of mouth his products and blog create. To my knowledge, he does not buy any advertising and sales are soaring.
You only have to read his Movable Type blog and how many comments he has to understand the community of t-shirt fans he has created. Patrice's readers participate in everything, they give their advise and suggestions, they create trust around an unknown brand for new site visitors by the quality of the comments.
There is more. Patrice has just relaunched his ecommerce shop to integrate his customers in the t-shirt creation process. Anybody can propose a new t-shirt visual, which is then submitted to vote. The best logos are produced on t-shirts and the authors get 300 euros for each of them.
La Fraise customers are in the center of the company and define the new products. Amazing experience that shows us the path to new e-commerce around blogs and conversations, with trust and customer feedback as the two key drivers of business. The word of mouth does the rest.

So go and check out La Fraise

If anyone out there believes that today we can ignore communities, or that we cannot create them I suggest they pause for thought. Because this is happening at so many levels that it demonstrates that our insights at SMLXL are correct. Markets are conversations and the role of what we describe as GenC or the community generation is a theory based today on reality.
This turns conventional branding and marketing on its head. But if the Vice Chairman at General motors blogs because he knows he has a wider community he has to engage with, as well as the COO of Sun Microsysytems Jonathan Schwartz or Robert Scoble of Microsoft. If the Boeing World Design Team numbering 150,000 people contributing as a community into a commercial project.

These are indications that we are witnessing a paradigm shift at many levels.
What is branding? What is media and who controls it? How do you go to market? How do you build your business model? Who are your stakeholders/community? There many more.
One has to understand that today 'the community' has the potential and capability to be a potent force that changes how we interact with eachother.
And how we do business. And this has as much to do with traditional bricks and mortar businesses with industrial age business models, as it has with any body else.
If I were a brand I would be sitting and thinking who is my community and how can I engage with them before someone else does?

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Posted in: Advertising, Convergence, Culture, Darwin, Distribution, Economics, Engagement Marketing, Ethics, Generation C, Marketing, Media, Networks, Participation, Philosophy, Social Networks, Society, Trends, Web/Tech

Dyson uses blogs to launch new product

Thanks to the guys at the Big Blog Company for bringing this to my attention
Sucking sound
Dyson as in vacuum cleaners is using the blogosphere to launch its new product. Net Imperative says

Dyson has selected Shiny Shiny and Tech Digest, the flagship blog sites for publisher Shiny Media, to run its latest teaser ads. The deal represents the first time that a UK blog has been chosen for a major ad campaign. The teaser features a branded "Pong-style" game, which runs on skyscraper banners either side of the page.

The big blog Company says

Congratulations to Shiny Media for being treated like a media.

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Posted in: Advertising, Engagement Marketing, Marketing, Participation, Social Networks, Trends, Weblogs

Leave your mind open to what you are seeing

WHY WE MUST FORGE AHEAD INTO NEW METHODS OF ADVERTISING Marketers' Greatest Potential Is In Cutting-Edge Technologies
Scott Donaton, editor of AdAge has some very interesting thoughts about the above title.

The future is here.
This isn't some dark vision of the terrifying implications of a future that may or may not come to pass. It's the reality of marketing circa the ides of March 2005. Beware.
Think consumers won't pay for content without the subsidy of ad dollars? Think again. Or, better yet, eye your own monthly cable bill and add up your iTunes invoices.
This marketing revolution is neither theoretical, nor overblown. It's under way. But this is not a time for fear, resistance, denial or defensiveness — despite the natural inclination to protect an existing pile of cash. It's the most exciting time ever to be in or around the businesses of media, marketing and communications. You can feel it, too. I know you can.

Its why we believe our book Communities Dominate Brands is integral to this debate. One must embrace the future not deny it – or least discuss it.
As the author Paul Auster wrote in True Tales of American Life :

…if your mind is still open enough to question what you are seeing, you tend to look at the world with great care, and out of that watchfulness comes the possibility of seeing something that no one else has seen before. You have to be willing to admit you don't have all the answers.

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Posted in: Advertising, Darwin, Engagement Marketing, Marketing, Media, Participation, Trends