I love MAD MEN, but this is sad

I love the AMC show MAD MEN, and I love it when brands extend beyond their typical medium (products, services, utility and all of the various forms of entertainment). I’ve even written about how much I loved the appearance of MAD MEN characters on twitter, but a blog that I follow (It’s Not You, It’s Media) just brought to my attention a momentary lack of effort by the MAD MEN producers.

The short story is (I’ll let you get it all from It’s Not You here), is that one of the characters, Roger Sterling, wrote a memoir during the 4th season called “Sterling’s Gold”. This book appears to actually have been released in the real world (extending beyond the show’s typical medium), with one exception, it isn’t the actual book, it’s just a collection of one-liners from the show. Check it out here.

To me, and to the wonderful person over at It’s Not You, this is just sad and shows a supreme lack of effort by the producers. How hard would it really be to push a bit further and give us more of the world that you’ve so wonderfully created on TV? This would have been an amazing way to do it (one, that I had never heard about or even considered until reading the blog post). It would have blown your viewers away, further entrenched their loyalty to your brand, given you an amazing PR story and probably even made you a chunk of change along the way. I echo It’s Not You‘s post and say: shame on you MAD MEN folks. Shame on you.

This downfall reminds me of a success story that I also recently came across. The Dos Equis brand has extended the “The Most Interesting Man In The World” campaign to include a Cirque Du Soleil style show called “The Most Interesting Show In The World” that is now travelling around the US, with the premise of it being “curated” by The Most Interesting Man, and hosted by Andrew W.K.. How much this really builds the Dos Equis brand, I don’t know, but I do think that it is a wonderful extension of the campaign.

What do you think?

Thanks!
Brian

UPDATE: I just read a very thoughtful and informative post from a blog called Transmythology, which also saw the news of Sterling’s Gold on It’s Not You’s post. Take a read, it certainly brings to light some things that I may not have thought of, like the difficulty in having MAD MEN’s creative visionary, Matthew Weiner (a very busy man) involved in shaping the story. That being said, I’d stand behind the recommendation that the producers/agency still should have not released the book, as they have now disappointed their viewers.

I also now realize that this sort of thing is called transmedia (duh).

Two Solid Social Media Campaigns

I read about these two fun examples of how companies can promote their brand in the social space, through the use of really simple and creative ideas. They both provide something fun and unique to the folks online, making them ripe for the sharing. They also both came to me from BrandFlakes For Breakfast. So, many thanks to the wonderful folks over there for keeping my RSS reader entertained.

The first example is made by web security company, webroot. They bost that they protect you and your computer, but are pushing further with a fun & free new tool that protects your social media profiles as well. It protects you from yourself, in fact, with it’s Social Media Sobriety Test. This tool helps to prevent you from making an ass of yourself on Facebook, Twitter, etc. while you’re drunk, by locking you out if you’re too far gone to make good decisions. Take a look:

The video is a bit dry, but I love this. Is it useful? Sure. Will people actually use it? Probably not. BUT, is it being shared around and getting the name webroot out there? SURE IS! Already, 11,289 people have liked the site (Nov 17 @ noon EST), there is a constant stream of tweets with people sharing the site, and google trends is showing “webroot” queries above its relatively consistent average since the site launched in early November (loosely correlated I’m sure, but still).

The second example (coming to BrandFlakes via blastr.com) is from Architects Southwest, an architecture firm based in Lafayette Louisiana (read: a random architecture firm). They created a competition for designs of the Best Zombie Safe House. I think this is simply a very fun twist on the same-old user-submitted competition strategy, especially because it’s about Zombies. Who doesn’t love Zombies?

Zombie Safe House Winner

Now I don’t know what the objective was behind this. It could have been pure awareness, or it could have been to identify young new architectural talent, but either way it’s fun, and it was CHEAP! (they used a wordpress.com hosted blog and their Facebook fan page to run it). Is it working? Well, they aren’t doing to well with cultivating fans of their companies Facebook fan page, they have over 2000 votes on a small Zombie related poll they took on the Safe House blog, there are lots and lots of tweets about the contest. Google didn’t have enough search results to show us any trends, but still… A valiant effort from a small company that wanted to get their name talked about.

So, what does this all mean? You tell me. I just like how solid and fun the ideas are.

Thanks!
Brian

Sustainability: A Marketer’s Responsibility?

I was happy to see this article in AdAge this morning talking about Unilever’s (as well as other packaged goods companies’) drive to increase the sustainability of their operations. It just so happens that I’ve been noodling this type of idea in my head recently, and I was happy to see evidence of progress.

In my mind, it is the responsibility of us marketers to create sustainability in the products or services that we put out there, because there is a lot of evidence that would suggest that the majority of consumers will not purchase a product based solely on environmental benefits. Most consumers (myself included) buy products with only a thought to themselves:

• “is this product the best that I can get?”
• “does this product do what I want it to do?”
• “what will others think of me buying this product?”
• “is this a good price for me to pay, can I get the same or similar thing cheaper?”

What I really don’t like, though, is when marketers spend too much time and efforts in promoting the fact that their products are “NOW GREEN!!!” This is too much for me.

A company that I will applaud is Method. Their company’s ethos is rooted in both amazing design and remarkable sustainability. They have been able to promote their green nature, while still providing cool and effective products designed to be easy to use at a reasonable price. Nice and simple. I forgive the fact that they promote their green-ness, because they’re just so good at marketing it.

Love that spot.

Thanks!
Brian

WikiLearning? – LSBF Opens Up Their MBA Program

Just read about this on ReadWriteWeb, and had to share.

LSBF Facebook App

The London School of Business and Finance has just launched a Facebook app that allows you to learn from and participate in (to a degree) their MBA program. You get access to lectures, notes and online group discussions all from their MBA program and through your Facebook account. LSBF is apparently touting this as a “try before you buy” program, but I think that this is the first of a new innovation in open sourced education.

Think about this: most education (especially higher learning programs like an MBA) is made better with more collaboration from more people from more varied backgrounds. With this open access mobile app, LSBF isn’t just doing a good service to the community and possible future students, but it’s also opening up its current students to insights and collaboration from anyone and everyone in the world. WikiLearning. I like it.

Thanks!
Brian

Apple has gone to the bikes

I just read on inhabitat.com that Apple has recently filed a patent for a brand new smart bike. Take a look at the simple conceptual diagram below that I got from the inhabitat post.

I’m sure that we can all imagine the never ending possibility of the interconnected features that this bike could offer its rider, as imagined by the design gurus over at Apple. Think Nike+, but for biking, instead of running, and then probably multiply the functionality by 10, and add real-time connections with other bikers and GPS tracking.

Drooling Apple-crazy fans aside, this is an interesting move from the technology company that has been so successful over the past few years with the launches of the new Macs, the iPOD, the iPHONE and the iPAD. For me, it begs the question, is this possible new product an appropriate fit within Apple’s brand?

There is a concept that I quite like called the Brand Positioning Space. It helps marketers define what moves, decisions and new products would be appropriate based on how their brand is defined in the eyes of the consumer, i.e. will consumers accept it as a part of the brand, or will they see a disconnect that would confuse them and work to dilute the power of the brand? The classic example of this is with Starbucks and their pre-packaged frappuccinos sold in grocery stores around the globe. Does this fit with the brand by offering a delicious coffee house experience wherever you want, or does it live outside Starbucks’ brand positioning space by not engulfing the customer in the “third-place” type of coffee house experience, and allowing them the luxury of customization?

Another great example that I love because of its creative simplicity is Innocent Drinks, a health-foods beverage company that wants “to make it easy for people to do themselves some good.” As the name would suggest, everything that they do is meant to be good, pure and innocent. For instance, their “drinks are always completely pure, fresh and unadulterated.” This brand has created a very simple and tightly defined brand positioning space that they can use to judge every decision that they make: is it innocent? Love it, even though I’ve never actually tried it. haha

So, what about this latest move from Apple? It’s certainly a very creative idea along the evolution of digitizing our lives, but does it fit within their brand positioning space? What is Apples fundamental brand position? It seems pretty obvious that Apple has been shifting it’s brand positioning for years now, with the launch of the iPOD. Before iPOD, Apple was a personal computer company that offered a creative alternative to the mass adopted PC. Since iPOD, Apple, in my mind, has forged itself into the iLIFE company, providing consumers with ways to surround their everyday life with personal digital devices that make their days easier and more enjoyable.

If Apple is in fact the iLIFE company, then this product would, in theory, make sense. The “in theory” for me is about them creating a non-digital product that has digital hook-up capabilities. What about Apple makes me as a consumer trust that they understand physical movement engineering enough to make a good bike? Would it not make more sense for them to partner with a Bike company, in the same way that they partnered with Nike for Nike+?

While I love the creativity of this as a product, I simply question its fit into the core of Apple’s brand. Time will certainly tell, and I’m sure that if launched, this will sell to those Apple obsessed techies among us. The question is, will it sell to the rest of us?

What do you think?

Thanks for reading
Brian

Is today Content Marketing Day?

Today seems to be “Content Marketing Day” in my google reader.

For the uninitiated, content Marketing, as defined by Wikipedia, “is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases.” First off, I’m a huge fan of the endless possibility for creativity and business success that comes with content marketing. It, in my mind, is central to why and how a brand should engage in the social space. Be it “brand as entertainment” or “brand as utility”, both work amazingly when done well. The key though here is “done well”. If not executed properly, content marketing can be a huge waste of everyone’s time.

So, what made it Content Marketing Day? First, Mitch Joel posted on his Six Pixels of Separation blog that only 16% of brands engage in conversations with consumers on Twitter. As a part of his post, he mentioned that some recent research has shown that many consumers actually simply want information from the brands that they follow, as opposed to conversation. The content that those consumers are looking for from their brands is not what we marketers would imagine, given our obsession with social media and engagement… a very interesting insight.

Second, Scott Brinker over at Search Engine Land posted his 4 Principles of Conversion Content Marketing, which was a great high-level user’s guide for how to make content marketing useful by driving conversion (getting consumers to do what you want them to do – ex: ask for a quote) in appropriate ways. Worth a read for anyone working on a content marketing project.

As I’m a big fan, I’d love to share some great & creative examples of content marketing in action:

Best Buy – #Twelpforce

Confused about something electronics related? Have an issue with your TV that you can’t sort out? Well, Best Buy wants to help. Type your question into Twitter and include the hashtag #TwelpForce – within minutes you’ll get at lease one, if not multiple responses from friendly and knowledgable Best Buy employees with an answer to your question or a possible fix for your issue. I tried it once, got five responses within five minutes. What I have always been really impressed about with this service is that Best Buy advertised about its existence! They didn’t just sit back and hope that people would find out about it naturally. That was smart, realistic and honest.

Charmin – Bathroom Locator App

Gotta go? I mean really go, but are out and about, don’t know where you can around you and hate sketchy bathrooms? Apparently so do a lot of people, and Charmin farmed that and created a fun iPhone app to help you. It’ll tell you what public bathrooms are around you based on your location, and will let you know what other consumers thought of their condition. I love this app because it’s fun, doesn’t take itself too seriously, provides honest utility and includes appropriate social features.

Tiffany’s – Ring Designer App

Yes, my girlfriend did bring this app to my attention. I’ll spare you the stereotypical commitment-phobic boyfriend jokes, and just say that I quite like the simplicity and usefulness of this app. Tiffany’s long ago realized how obsessed women are with engagement rings, and this application helps to propel that by giving them a resource they can use to imagine what a gorgeous ring would look like on their finger. It’s also got a nifty ring sizing function that is just plain useful if you don’t know your size (or your girlfriend’s for that matter – not that I’m using it myself).

Dairy Milk – Glass and a Half Full Productions

With this now classic spot, in 2007 Cadbury became a pioneer of branded entertainment. They created a series of spots which had the sole purpose of entertaining those watching them, in order to build love for the Dairy Milk brand. They did not try to sell you something, or educate you about their brand, they just wanted you to enjoy yourself. This was at the time, and still is, an immensely brave thing to do.

BC Dairy – Must Drink More Milk Online Videos

How to you convince 10-15 year-old boys that they should do something that is healthy and their mothers think is a good idea, like drink more milk? Well, apparently what works is making very oddly entertaining online videos that show the benefits of drinking more milk, and then actively spread them across the web. Above is my favourite one, but if you visit the site, you’ll find a lot more, including some crowdsourced examples.

BlendTec – Will It Blend?

Well known in the social marketing space, this brand came out of nowhere to become an online phenomenon by creating a long series fun and engaging content that made consumers want to share it and converted to a mass of sales for this high-end blender.

Got any content marketing programs that you’ve seen and want to share?

So, What makes these campaigns so successful? How does one do branded content well? Below is a list with my thoughts on the matter, but I by no means want to pretend that I’m an expert on this. I would love nothing more than to hear your thoughts and opinions as to how to succeed at content marketing.

• Have a purpose - don’t just do something, because it’s the hot new marketing tactic. Have a solid business reason behind it. This may be a simple thing to say, but you’d be surprised.
• Draw from insights -  base both what you do, and how you do it on specific insight to those consumers who you are targetting. As an example, think of Mitch’s Six Pixels post. A key point is that not all consumers are looking for a conversation from their brands on Twitter. Some do just want basic information. As such, think about using the media that makes the most sense for your consumers, in the way that makes the most sense for what they’re looking for.
• Appropriate creativity at every turn – Be creative with everything you create and put out there. This doesn’t just mean creative execution, it includes you being creative in your strategy, approach or use of the medium.
• Use “Agile Marketing” practices –  The basic theory behind this is to go-to-market fast with your idea, learn from the results that come in, revise and repeat. I found this post within the above Search Engine Land post that explains this much better. I love this practice by the way, and can’t wait to get a chance to put it into action.

I would love to know your thoughts on all of this, so let me know what you think

Thanks for reading!
Brian

The Great Schlep – gotta love a good influencer strategy

Yes, I know, I know… this campaign is 2 years old. Well, I didn’t have a blog back then, so I’m gonna write about it now :)

I love this campaign. Love it… and not just because it supported Obama. I loved it because of the brilliantly creative and brave use of an influencer strategy. For the 2 of you who may not have seen it at the time, this was a campaign done by advertising agency Droga5, to help Barak Obama win the all-important swing state of Florida. The key insight being that the vast majority of the voters in Florida are elderly jewish people, who are heavily influenced by the thoughts and feelings of their grandchildren. If you haven’t seen it in a while, take a look:

A wonderfully funny and creative communications piece that authentically fit in with the sense of humour of its target – teenage & 20 something jewish Americans. But what is much more at the core is purely the strategy behind it. Instead of doing a traditional piece aimed at elderly Jewish voters, Droga5 made the message stronger for them by making it come from their loving grandchildren. Beautiful, especially due to the amount of skepticism about Obama that existed in this elderly jewish community at the time.

And it was effective to boot:

So, yes… I did just talk about a campaign that won a special new award at Cannes last year… but, as I said… I didn’t have a blog when this came out, so here you are.

Any thoughts on this campaign?

Thanks!
Brian

PS – I do like Sarah Silverman, and thought this was a great promo that her ex, Jimmy Kimmle did for her

Barbie is on Twitter?

Yes, Barbie is on Twitter, and I say good for Mattel. See, I’m a big fan of fictional characters appearing in the social space. I love it so much, in fact, that I have my author Mother, Mary Tod, blogging a fictional diary for one of her characters as a way to promote one of her books. It’s just in the early stages, but has the potential to be quite a good story as it unravels.

They’re probably late in the game, but I like how Mattel is being creative and thinking of new ways to extend the Barbie brand online. This tactic is ripe for creativity and engagement. It may be a bit silly, but I’m sure true brand lovers are enjoying it.

My favorite example of brand characters engaging in the social space is when MAD MEN characters started chatting on twitter a couple of years ago (Don, Betty, Roger – to name a few). The unfortunate thing here was that AMC actually didn’t have much to do with this, as it was all created and fueled by real fans (at least initially).

Now, we can all agree that this did great wonders for sparking conversations about the show online, but where would the show be if it hadn’t happened? well… truthfully they’d likely still be extremely successful, because it’s an amazing show, BUT I do believe that they missed a huge opportunity. I wish that the wonderful folks at MAD MEN / AMC had looked at twitter with a creative eye and seen it as a potential great new medium to extend their plot lines beyond TV. This did happened on its own, but without any control over the brand and plot.

So, what’s my point? The social space offers brands the chance to literally bring their personality to life for consumers, and a lot have started doing so (see Knorr’s SALTY, for example). I applaud these efforts, the creativity behind them, and their guts to put the resources into it. In Barbie’s case, I would only ask Mattel – how many 5 year old girls are actually active twitter users?

What do you think? Is Mattel wasting their time in the cluttered twittersphere, or are they creating something fun for brand ambassadors to engage in? Please do let me know

Thanks to Mark Schaefer and his site/blog {grow} for bringing this to my attention.

Thanks!
Brian

PS – a challenge to authors and the publishing industry: think of the various social media outlets as a way to write a story… how about a play that unfolds entirely through twitter?

PPS – I did enjoy the MAD MEN avatar creator, see me here:

IDEO – The Constantly Creative Company

If you’ve taken any sort of business degree since 1999 (me = BCOM 2006), then you’re likely to have seen a special “deep dive” episode of ABC’s NIGHTLINE that featured the innovative and creative powers of a company called IDEO. This Palo Alto based firm (as Wikipedia has reminded me) was tasked, during this “deep dive” with revolutionizing the traditional, tired and old shopping cart in just 5 days. If you’ve already guessed where I’m heading with this… they were successful, and came up with some pretty cool ideas… take a look:

I’ve actually seen some of their ideas in my local grocery store (thanks Business Week for the image), and they only had 5 days to do this. Think about what that means for their creative powers.

This company, which opened its doors in 1991, is constantly and consistently able to come up with unique, creative and useful solutions to everyday problems. Their list of clients is long and impressive, and they are darlings of the design and innovation world. Since seeing this video, I have always been impressed with their ability to be constantly creative, so I thought I’d dive a bit deeper into how they do it.

First, a bit about the company. IDEO bills itself as a “design and inovation consulting firm,” and has 5 offices across the US, 2 in Europe and 2 in Asia. They have over 1000 patents, and have won more than 350 design awards for work done for their very, very long list of clients. Their projects are as diverse as one could imagine, and include:

• Redefining Self-Service Banking for BBVA Group
• Brand Strategy for Havaianas
• Design Partnership for Samsung
• CleanWell Business Platform
• Ethical Consumerism Concepts for Oxfam GB
• Transcutaneous Immunization Delivery Method for Intercell

So, how do they do it? How is IDEO company able to be this consistently creative? IDEO centers their process around what they like to call “design thinking”, which brings together Inspiration (from a deep understanding and observation people and the challenge), Iteration (i.e. prototyping) and Storytelling (to help spread their new ideas) – check out more on this here.

In addition to this structure of their approach, as far as I’ve been reading (and remember from the NIGHTLINE episode), they have a well formulated and obsessively practiced methodology for brainstorming, for which a key component is putting diverse groups of people together to farm their collective brains. It’s no new news that brainstorming is a key process of creativity, and that having diverse perspectives helps to fuel creativity, but IDEO has somehow been able to create the right environment for an immense amount of creative and innovative thinking. Who knows how, but hats off to them…

Me – I’m not the best brainstormer. I’m better at taking ideas and running with them, but that’s why I’m a account manager (“suit”) and not a creative.

What do you think? How does IDEO do it? Let me know

Thanks!
Brian

Miss Matched Socks make for a creative brand

Don’t you like it when you see or hear about something fun and different?

I first heard of Little Miss Matched when reading Mitch Joel’s book, Six Pixels of Separation. I was intrigued, so I’ve been researching this different retailer to find out more.

What I found, first off, was that I’m super behind on discovering this… but that’s not the point (Seth Godin first wrote about it in 2004). The point is that this is a company that has approached the fashion category in a creative and unique way. They intentionally sell clothing that is mismatched, and people are just eating them up.

It all started with socks. The founders recall on their facebook page, that one day they were sitting around complaining about how dryers eat socks, and you’re left with mismatched pairs. They then asked themselves “Why do we have to wear matching socks, anyway? Maybe matching is overrated!” And thus the concept of buying sets of 3 mismatched socks that all kind of go together in an odd and fun way was born. The wonderful and inspiring thing is that this fun and different, very creative idea has been embraced by many many consumers (their core being tweenage & teenage girls). They’ve gotten so popular, that they have expanded far beyond socks, into other types of fun and mismatched (or miss matched) clothing. They even sell to interesting men like Seth Godin.

So, what do you think? Odd little concept that will go nowhere in the long run, or creative niche of the clothing market that has created a vibrant brand and will grow and sell nicely into the future? Please let me know… would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks!
Brian

ps – yes, I do accept miss matched socks as gifts