Church of the Customer: Books archives
January 25, 2010
Why it's important to be a linchpin and an artist
If you want to succeed in today's world of work, author Seth Godin says you should focus on being a "linchpin." That's the title of his new book, so we asked him a few questions about it.
Q: What is a linchpin, and why is it important to become one?
A linchpin is the part you can't live without, the thing that makes a difference. In every organization there are one (or several) people like this. It might be the brilliant inventor who creates the impossible, but it's far more likely to be the great sales rep or customer service person who makes a connection, or the marketer who knows how to tell a story that resonates.
In a post-factory world, manning the assembly line isn't so critical. Stuffing the candies into the boxes, running the punch press, following the manual... these are easily replaced roles, ones where neither the worker nor the organization gains much on the margin. If you want real job satisfaction and security, then, you need to figure out how to do the unexpected, to do work that matters and to create human interactions.
Q: You talk about linchpins being artists. What's the difference between a conventional marketer and one who thinks like an artist? Can you give an example of a marketer who is an artist?
Art, by my definition, has nothing to do with painting and everything to do with connecting with people in a generous way and causing a change to take place. A movie director is making art when she makes you cry. A product designer creates art when the UI is better than it needs to be and it creates efficiency or even joy. Marketers can find plenty of Dummies books and manuals and insider PDFs that demonstrate, step by step, how to follow the rules. That's easy and not particularly valuable. A marketer becomes an artist when she goes out on a limb, does the unexpected or the risky and makes a difference.
I'd argue that you two do art when you stand up and give a talk about the 1%. Or Biz Stone was an artist when he figured out how to launch and scale Twitter's marketing. Or Scott Monty at Ford when he does a car show rollout that bypasses the cocktail parties at AutoWeek in favor of individual interviews with social media mavens. The second time someone does something, it's a copy. The first time, it's art.
Q: We understand the concept of "physical labor" when it comes to work, but you stress the importance of "emotional labor." What do you mean by that, and can you give us an example?
I don't know about you, but I haven't gotten paid to do physical labor in a really long time. Maybe typing.
Emotional labor is the act of smiling when you're scared, or getting on a plane when you're tired. It's dreaming when you don't feel like dreaming, caring when the other person is (frankly) acting like a jerk. Emotional labor is work with your heart and your soul and your feelings. We seem to feel it should be easy, but it's not. It is, though, important.
Q: We love this quote in the book: "The easier it is to quantify, the less it's worth." Can you tell us, and our MBA friends, why this is true?
If you can quantify it, then probably someone before you figured out a why to grind it out. And if you can grind it out, someone can grind it out cheaper than you can.
On the other hand, the really valuable stuff, the stuff we pay a lot for, is unquantified. Things like creating joy or security or happiness. No easy measurements for those, thus they are art, and art is always worth more than the predicted.
We measure the quantified because we can. But we should create the unquantified because it's so rare.
Q: Our lizard brain tells us to "Shut up. Don't stand out. Don't speak out. Blend in." If we want to be a linchpin, how do we silence this negative part of our brain?
Steve Pressfield calls this the resistance. The voice in your head that destroys your art. There are a myriad of ways to defeat it. You can distract it. You can trick it. You can steamroll it. You can seduce it with small steps. I'm not sure there's one best technique, but I know for certain that it must be done. My book has only one goal: to sell you on committing to this very task.
January 18, 2010
5 new ways to compete for book PR
(Editor's note: This is a guest post from Barbara Henricks of CaveHenricks, a public relations firm for business books and authors. She's considered by many to be one of the best book publicists in the publishing industry. She can be reached at barbara@cavehenricks.com.)
I’ve been in the PR business nearly 20 years, and there’s been more change the past two years than in the first 18.
That’s created much fear and confusion. Readers are consuming content from more outlets and with a staggering number of devices-- via iPhones, computers, Blackberries, Kindles, Nooks and Sony Readers, to name a handful.
Getting a book published in 2010 is vastly different than in 2007. Advances are lower, editors are more wary of risk, print runs are shrinking, bookstores are ordering fewer copies, marketing dollars are tighter and publicists are chasing coverage in a media world that is undergoing its own transformation. That means authors today must master a new environment, relying on strategy, customization, and increased author participation.
Here are five ways for writers, authors and publishers to market in this new environment:
- A great media campaign will discard many if not all of the old notions, conventional wisdom and template approach of the past. There is no one blueprint for building a best seller. The best campaigns draw on all forms of media, with increased emphasis on digital forms. Campaigns today rely on the author’s participation beyond traditional tours and interviews. The best campaigns draw on an author’s natural strengths.
- There are no longer any magic bullets. No one single media hit can ensure a book’s meteoric rise to the top, with the possible exception of a full hour of “The Oprah Show” that features only one book, its ideas or the author.
- Magazine coverage is coming later and later, but now has the potential to prolong a book’s sales life. Not so long ago, if a magazine did not commit to coverage 3-4 months ahead of a book’s publication date, the process was over. Now, magazine editors will often take a look at finished books and post a review, an article or a bylined piece by the author in their online editions almost immediately. In some cases, if the online piece gets a lot of views, the magazine will run something in the print edition months after the book’s release, which will keep the sales alive well into the campaign.
- Bloggers are jumpstarting many successful media campaigns. For this to work, authors must be willing to become active participants – offering relevant content, contributing comments and connecting directly with bloggers themselves. It’s still the publicist’s job to do the legwork to guide authors through the vast landscape of bloggers, identifying a target group whose readership matches most closely with the book’s intended audience, but the author’s direct participation is required to make this outreach successful.
- Relationships will remain at the heart of good book promotion, but forming them will be more difficult than ever, particularly with the blog world. The best approach is good strategy – taking stories and ideas to a journalist only after very careful consideration of whether that book or message truly meets their needs. Repeatedly delivering only relevant material is the biggest relationship builder of all.
The landscape is different, the challenges new, but as always, big ideas and great books will will always find their way. As someone who cherishes her Kindle for its portability, must have the Sunday New York Times in its reassuringly weighty bundle, reads daily news online and cherishes her big glossy copy of Vogue, I know the industry will figure out how to integrate these formats into a successful mix.
Right now, it’s in flux.
March 04, 2009
The 1 book on...
The average Fortune 500 executive reads 9 business books per year. The average entrepreneur/business owner reads, maybe, 2-3 per year.
That's according to Todd Sattersten, co-author of the recent book "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time" and president of bookseller 800-CEO-READ. Given that time is short for everyone, I asked Todd to recommend just one book for COTC readers among a variety of business categories.
Q: The one book on leadership?
A: "The Leadership Challenge," by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. It was conceived in the late 70s and published in the early 80s. It's the most complete model for how to think about leadership. It's very research-based; they went out and asked leaders to tell them what their behaviors and experiences were like when they were having personal best moments. It's a classic. Now in its 4th edition, it's a perfect place to start.
Q: The one book on innovation?
A: "The Art of Innovation" by Tom Kelly. Tom is the general manager of Ideo. Many people know Ideo -- they're the folks behind the original Apple mouse, and they've done a ton of stuff since. What I like about Tom's view of innovation is that it isn't theoretical, it's very pragmatic. It's techniques they use, like observation and prototyping. There's been a lot of research in the past several years that says brainstorming is not a good way to come up with ideas; Ideo will tell you emphatically that brainstorming is an outstanding idea. It's a core competency. One thing I like about the book is the numerous examples found in each chapter on how to be innovative.
Q: The one book on strategy?
A: Instead of a book, I would recommend a Harvard Business Review article by Michael Porter called "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy." We don't recommend his book, "Competitive Strategy." It's 432 pages. It's a little dry and quite impenetrable but at 26 pages, his HBR article is absolutely outstanding. It's still the best model for how people should think about strategy.
Q: The one book on sales?
A: "How to be a Rainmaker" by Jeffrey Fox. It's very nugget-oriented. Lots of great, quick ideas.
Q: The one book on marketing?
A: "Positioning: The Battle for your Mind," by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It's a classic book from the 80s based on a series of articles that ran in the 70s. They're the guys who said "own a word." It's the pre-cursor to "Purple Cow." There's so much stuff that gets based off positioning. Peolple tend to read the stuff that's come out since then. I can't recommend it enough. Everyone should read it.
February 18, 2009
5 questions with Emanuel Rosen
Emanuel Rosen is the dean of buzz. His ground-breaking book,
“The
Anatomy of Buzz," defined how buzz spreads from person to
person, network to network.
This month, an updated version of that book, "The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited" comes out with oodles of updates. We asked Emanuel five questions about how buzz looks today vs. 2000, when his book was first published.
1. Do you define a difference between word of mouth and buzz?
I use the word “buzz” as an umbrella term to describe all the person-to-person communication about something. I like the definition you gave in your first book: “Buzz = Word of Mouth + Word of Mouse” but I would add to this formula any other type of communication (for example: learning through observation). By the way, the first person to suggest the word buzz to me was Everett Rogers, the late diffusion scholar. I told him that I didn’t like this term, but over the years I grew to like it a lot.
I read your latest blog entry on word of mouth vs. buzz and, although we use different terms, I agree with the spirit of the things. The foundation of buzz is a great customer experience. No doubt about this. But even customers who love you sometimes forget and run out of opportunities to talk. My whole focus has been on ways to trigger and stimulate additional conversations, and there’s more than one way of doing this.
2. Network-theory scientist Duncan Watts disputes a lot of what’s in Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” specifically that if marketers just reach a few influential tastemakers then word of mouth should flourish. Where do you stand on Watts’s research?
My approach is practical: there are people who talk more than others. Whenever you can, cost effectively, identify these folks and work with them — go for it. Watts’s work is an important reminder that not all buzz is created by hubs or influentials, but it does not prove that connecting with these people doesn’t work. In the new edition of my book I dedicate five pages to this debate but the above is my view in a nutshell.
3. What’s your assessment of how social media affects word of mouth today?
Social media let text-based buzz explode, but perhaps more important is the effect it has on visual buzz. Buzz is not only about telling, but more and more about showing. My friend doesn’t have to tell me that he likes Lego Mindstorms. He just posts a video of the latest robot he built using these Lego bricks. My cousin doesn’t have to tell me that she supports a certain organization. I see on Facebook that she’s now a fan of that cause. A lot of the value of social media comes from this type of implicit recommendation.
4. How prevalent is fake buzz, whether its agencies creating astroturfing campaigns for clients or companies comment-stuffing review sites like Yelp?
I didn’t investigate how prevalent it is but I’m sure that undercover marketing is out there and that’s such a shame. Anyone who cares about word of mouth should fight this type of manipulation. I like the approach of Zagat and Angie’s List, that see it as part of their job to ensure the integrity of their sites. On a related issue, I think we should encourage everyone to generate more experience-based buzz (“I read this book and I liked it because…) as opposed to secondhand buzz (“my friend says that his cousin read this book and it’s cool.”) With too much secondhand buzz, we'll end up with what can be best described as a buzz bubble as illustrated by a review posted on Amazon: "I haven't read this book, but judging from the online reviews below, I don't think it's a very good book."
5. In the big picture, what do you think is more helpful in understanding buzz and word of mouth: marketing or psychology?
Psychology. I think that the first step is always to understand what motivates people to do certain things. Marketing techniques come and go, but if you understand why people talk about products, you can find new ways to motivate them to talk about your brand.
Join Emanuel Rosen in a SWOM webinar next week with a chance to win one of five autographed copies of "The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited."
January 22, 2009
Has a business book changed your life?
One book that changed my life was "Free Agent Nation" by Dan Pink.
For some 13 years, I had always worked for other people, including 11 years at IBM. Ben and I had just left our jobs at a web marketing firm in early 2001 to launch our business. I was nervous but "Free Agent Nation" explained how the world was shifting toward people working on their own, and I now knew we were surfing the trend, however unintentional our intention. Dan's book validated the decision to go free agent, giving me the courage to make the decision part of a permanent, life-altering course. Thanks, Dan!
Is there a business book that you've read that has impacted your life? The biz book guys at 800-CEO-READ are collecting stories about your favorite business books. Tell your story here.
Writing a book can change your life, too. If you've written one, or are thinking about it, you might want to consider attending our SWOM webinar on "Word of Mouth in Book Publishing" with Todd Sattersten from 800-CEO-READ. It's next week, and it's free.
November 17, 2008
Mark Cuban and hating to lose
The SEC has filed suit against Mark Cuban, alleging he engaged in insider trading in 2004 with mamma.com to avoid a $750,000 loss. At the time, Cuban was the largest shareholder in the company.
On his blog, Cuban denied the allegations, saying "the Commission’s claims are infected by the misconduct of the staff of its Enforcement Division."
Given how little we've heard from the SEC the past few years, save for how its overwhelming lack of enforcement during the financial industry meltdown, this is a curious case. Then again, Cuban "hates to lose," as he says in a separate blog post about the NBA team that he owns. That post immediately precedes his terse post about the SEC suit.
Cuban hates to lose and, as we learned profiling him and the Dallas Mavericks for a case study in "Creating Customer Evangelists," he sometimes struggles with the competing interests of long-term winning thinking and short-sightedness that can erase winning margins.
His long-term winning thinking is showcased in how he converted one of the worst franchises in professional sports to become one of the most valuable. He did so by making the opponents of his team feel just as welcome at the Mavs' arena with a visitors locker room that's as comfortable and well-appointed as his own team's; after all, opposing players may one day join your team. He made it OK for homemade signs to be brought into the arena (a stern no-no of the previous owners), and encouraged crazy fan loyalty by constantly demonstrating his own. He invested heavily in technology for the coaches and players and a statistician, two largely unexplored areas prior to Cuban's investments. He told us back in 2002 how much he admired the Chicago Cubs and the passionate loyalty of its fan, a loyalty cultivated by its honest, "loveable loser" spirit.
On the other hand, during our conversations with him, Cuban talked extensively of his time of being a daytrader prior to buying the Mavs and how he loved shortsellers "because they keep companies honest." Shortsellers, it turns out, have been partially blamed for the demise of a number of financial institutions this year. Cuban also defined ultimate success in business by being summoned to Congress amid accusations of holding a monopoly on an industry. Microsoft, of course, has spent billions paying fines and perhaps billions more in legal fees extracting itself from monopolist charges. It has taken many years to rebuild the goodwill from the damage caused by its previous win-at-all-costs mentality.
No doubt, Cuban will probably surprise a number of people with the way he defends himself against the SEC's charges. Ever since he was kid selling garbage bags door to door, he's been unafraid to win. The question about the mamma.com case, though, did he go too far to avoid losing?
Nothing against the watchdogs at the SEC, but I hope they're wrong.
Update: Cuban has posted a memo from his attorney, who excerpted his "interview" (unclear if it's a deposition) with the former mamma.com CEO. As we might have expected, this will probably evolve into a good example of a high-profile lawsuit first tried in the court of blog-driven public opinion. The stakes are high.
October 18, 2008
Let's talk about Tribes
WHAT: Live conference call with Seth Godin, Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba, and Michael Port about Seth's new book, "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us." We'll discuss how the Internet has enabled everyone to lead a tribe and create movements with customers, employees or neighbors.
WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008 at 2 pm EDT.
HOW MUCH: Free. Sign up here.
Can't make the live call? Not to worry. Register for the call and you'll receive a link to the recorded version.
August 26, 2008
10 questions with Tom Fishburne
Tom Fishburne is the Gary Larson of marketing: He creates cartoons that lampoon the often-ridiculous nature of business processes and marketing.
His inspiration is his work as a marketer at companies like General Mills, Nestle and home-product manufacturer Method Products, where he currently resides as senior marketing director of Europe.
His new book, "This One Time at Brand Camp," is a collection of his work from 2005-2008 (and features a foreword from CotC blogger Jackie Huba). We sat down with Tom (virtually) and tossed a basketful of questions at him.
Q: What's the biggest challenge in being a brand manager today?
Remarkable thinking. Then shepherding that thinking through the organizational gates. Too often the edges of a great idea get sanded, eventually launching as a pale shadow of the original idea.
I love this quote from Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad: "Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking."
Q: What's the biggest trap most brand managers stupidly fall into?
The mass market trap. Chasing market size. Trying to appeal to everyone and avoiding alienating anyone. By trying to appeal to everyone, no one gets excited.
In my past brand lives, we joked that our target was "a woman, age 25–39, with a pulse." Instead, if you cater to a passionate and vocal niche, you become more meaningful. Consumer loyalty follows. Niche marketing isn't just for small brands. General Mills does a great job of training marketers to find and truly understand your niche's brand champions. You create your products and marketing just for them. When you do, much of the mass market will follow, too.
Q: A central theme among many of your cartoons is the fear of standing out. From your experience at various companies, who typically is the driver in the race to be average -- an internal person/department or a force outside the company, such as Wall Street?
The fear of standing out mainly comes from inside the company. When I started at General Mills, a big product launch called Wahoos had just failed. Many people who worked on it had been let go. That created the Wahoos hangover: If someone suggested a risky idea in a meeting, someone else would say "we don't want another Wahoos." Most companies have their own version of a Wahoos hangover.
When I was at General Mills and Nestle I tacked this quote over my desk from Doug Hall: "Don't be afraid to take risks. Corporations have an amazing array of checks, balances, and safety nets to prevent you from hitting the wall at ninety miles an hour. Be bold and brash. Develop a reputation for it."
Q: How serious is the disconnect when brand managers work 12-16 months on product then, because of the nature of the employment game, move on to a new one? How can you build customer loyalty with such a short timeframe?
It's like that game of telephone we all played in kindergarten. A departing brand manager whispers their insights and brand plan to the replacement, much of which gets lost in the transition. Often the replacement brand manager starts from scratch with research and navel-gazing. As soon as the replacement brand manager gets a feel for the job, they move on, and the telephone game continues.
When I was starting out, I loved the quick transitions because I got exposure to different situations. But it's not great for creating customer loyalty. It sands the edges. It can feel like a different brand incarnation each year. A lot of hard work gets lost in the revolving door.
Q: Provide us, if you will, a brief, state of the union report on retailing today.
Retailing is in flux with the credit crunch. It will make consumers think hard about their brand choices. If a brand has proven that it is meaningful, it will continue to do well. If not, its true colors will be exposed. This is an acid test for meaningful brands.
Q: Who typically has the more insanely inflated ego: marketers or professional wrestlers?
Most of the marketers I've worked with have been down-to-earth. That's why I think ego inflation comes from hierarchy.
For instance, when I was at General Mills, all of the executives worked in a separate wing that even had its own parking garage we called the Bat Cave (where all the Jaguars went to park). They had a different dress code in the executive wing and there was very little mixing. The hierarchy was reinforced at every turn. As you progressed in marketing, you moved from a cubicle to something called an "officle" to eventually an office. You could tell the seniority of someone with an office by counting the number of ceiling tiles. I remember an official memo that stated that marketers above a certain level were entitled to leather Filofax binders. Everyone else received pleather. I swear I'm not making this up.
All of this resulted in a medical condition I call Title-itis, where it was assumed that the more senior the marketer, the better their ideas. It's tempting to start breathing your own exhaust in an environment like that.
I love the idea of a "No Holds Barred Title Bout World Marketing Federation Cage Match."
Q: Did your cartoon work help or hinder your landing at Method?
I joined method thanks to my cartoons (tell that to my high school guidance counselor). I discovered method in 2003 and was inspired by the impact they were making with such a small team. Then, I discovered that Eric Ryan, their co-founder, was getting my cartoon each week. So, I drew a cartoon on method comparing them to Apple and their famous "1984" ad where they took on IBM as Big Brother. That was my cover letter. When I actually joined the company a few years later, I told Eric that my last boss often said that if he ever ended up in a cartoon that I would be fired. Eric responded that if he didn't end up in a cartoon that I would be fired.
My cartoons often lampoon the type of business absurdities I try to exploit in my day job working with method as a challenger brand. Many of my cartoons are used around the company, in presentations on our strategy and even in our handbook. Eric often pings me with an idea that he wants to communicate. I'm pretty candid though, so I often cover topics in my cartoons if I think we're making a wrong call, steering in the wrong direction, or becoming too process-driven.
Q: What's your marketing mix for Method?
Eric once calculated that our competitors literally spend more on employee toilet paper than we do on advertising. We can't outspend them. So we think about everything we do as a form of marketing and that everyone in the company works in marketing. We believe in marketing from the inside out, so we start with a transparent culture. We tell our story through products that we take pains to ensure are remarkable and worth sharing. The next ingredient is relationship retail, where retailers help tell the story in-store by breaking category rules to shelf all of our products together as a lifestyle statement (think Apple store).
Next is how we talk with consumers. We don't outsource anything to a call center, because those who take the time to call or email you are exactly the ones you want to talk with directly. In the UK, the phone number on the bottles literally bounce around the office to everyone in the office, so we're all talking to consumers every week, which is really powerful. We spend a lot of time directly talking with a core group of our consumers we call advocates. We're over-generous with them, giving them lots of samples so they share our story with others.
Then, and only then, do we get to traditional awareness and trial tactics. Because we can't compete on advertising spend, we come up with ideas that let us break through the clutter in different ways. One way is to think of our brand as content. Where others focus on "paid media," we think "earned media." We focus heavily on PR; for instance, we just wrote a book called "Squeaky Green," which is a guide to a healthy home. It's not an infomercial (the only time it mentions the method brand is the cover), but it helps show a lifestyle and tell a philosophy. It's marketing that consumers actually pay us to read.
We've also started renting our own retail space to help tell our story in 3-D. Our first pop-up shop was in 2005, when we realized it was less expensive to open a temporary store than to run a billboard ad. So, we built a store to reach a few consumers in a deep way. So far, we've reached consumers this way in San Francisco, New York, Boston, London, and soon Chicago.
Q: How does Method plan for word of mouth?
We start with a story that is worth sharing. I'm amazed how many companies neglect this critical piece, and layer on a social media program as if it's just another FSI or shopping cart ad. The most important filter of everything we do is whether or not it will inspire people to talk about us. We know that it's working when we find consumers like Nathan, who created an entire blog devoted to method.
To help get the word out, we have a separate tier of consumers we call advocates that we've hand-picked from their interactions with us. We're overgenerous to these advocates. We send them a welcome kit with a cool t-shirt and a few pass-along kits to share with their friends. And then we keep talking with them to let them know first about what we're doing.
Q: Is branding dead and if so, where do we bury the body?
Your question inspired this week's cartoon.
I don't think branding is extinct. It's evolved. I used the evolution metaphor to play with a couple stereotypes in the noble profession of marketing.
Doctors have Hippocrates. Lawyers have Atticus Finch. Ask most consumers what archetypes there are for marketers and the snakeoil salesman comes to mind. That's because much of the history of marketing and branding has been about concocting a story consumers wanted to hear, even if the story was a wee bit phony. Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, famously quipped: "In our factories, we make cosmetics. In the store, we sell hope."
Nowadays, consumers are often in the marketer's seat. Consumers have always been the best source for what your brand means. The power used to be with the marketer to sculpt and shape that message. The question to ask now is no longer how your consumers play back the message you told them. It's what message are they spreading to others.
The key is to tell an authentic brand story (but careful that you don't overdo that like the authenticity hawker in the cartoon). Then find ways to help your consumers advocate on your behalf.
Tom's book is released next month; if you'd like an early-edition copy of the book, post a comment by 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 29 in a Society for Word of Mouth forum dedicated to the ideas that Tom discusses in this Q&A and in his book. We'll draw five random winners from those who've posted a comment. In the forum, you can also see more of Tom's work.
July 14, 2008
10 questions with Rob Walker
Study after study shows growing immunity to advertising, led by the march of DVRs into living rooms. We're shutting the door to the influence of brands, right?
Not so, according to New York Times Magazine “Consumed” columnist Rob Walker. He argues in his new book, "Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are," that people are embracing brands like never before. Yes, we're tired of advertising, but we're attaching ourselves to brands in new ways that affect our cultural, political, and community activities.
We asked Rob 10 questions about brand-building in today's hyperconnected world:
Q: What's your take on why a brand takes off?
A: That's a big question to start things off!
My short answer is that the brand/consumer relationship is always a dialogue. Nothing takes off without consumers making the decision to embrace something, to believe it has value. The dialogue is frequently subtle and indirect. Thus I call it a "secret" dialogue.
This has always been true. It's easy to lose sight of that, and I'll cop to doing so sometimes myself. I describe in the book how my original research on the iPod focused too much on locating some magical property of the device, rather than on the various ways consumers responded to it. As technology changes the dialogue in some ways, the core dialogue remains: buying or not buying. Meaning what? Well, in the case of New Coke, released at the height of mass-advertising power and with the full weight of one of the most potent companies in the world, the dialogue was short: "No."
I'm oversimplifying, and the dialogue gets much more complicated in other cases, but I hope you know what I mean. It's never been a one-way process. Let's be honest, too: the right timing and pure luck can affect dialogue, too.
Q: Is a brand today, then, the sum total of how a company defines it or how its customers talk about it?
A. Maybe it's more basic than that: what consumers think about it. Sometimes those thoughts lead to talk, which can be quite powerful, but sometimes they don't -- they just lead to not-buying X and buying Y instead. Or nothing at all. Brands and products don't exist in a vacuum. The world changes around us, so the tactics that worked for one brand at one time may not work for another brand at another time. Competitors adjust, the broader climate shifts, novelty fades, etc.
All of these factors play into your second category, how customers talk about a brand -- the nature of their talk might change for reasons that have nothing to do with the brand. Let's consider Starbucks: How much of the apparent "change" in the meaning of the Starbucks brand in the last year or two has to do with the company, and how much is based on actions of its competitors, and the culture at large?
Q: Will we as Americans, the targets of an unstoppable torrent of unrestrained advertising, ever rise to the level of the British and impose more regulation upon it?
A: Polls consistently tell us that Americans can't stand advertising, don't trust it, are annoyed by its incursion into and murkier venues -- and yet there appears to be no particular popular interest in regulation. I don't know why. The FCC is looking at ad placement, but it's unlikely that tough regulation will ever occur in the U.S. without serious public demands for it.
There's much talk about tech-enabled consumer power these days, but it takes the form of "complain about a product on a blog and get a free replacement," rather than more broad-based and wide-ranging reforms that might benefit everyone. Maybe that will change.
Consumers truly do have a lot of power -- movements of the past demonstrate that repeatedly -- so maybe we're just learning how to use the technology more effectively.
Q: You talk about the Livestrong bracelet as an example of a niche idea growing into mass appeal. How did that happen?
A: It's difficult to isolate any intrinsic property of the Livestrong bracelet that made it a hit. Clearly, the meaning of this rather low-utility object came from us, and it's a good example of the importance of dialogue. That happened many ways: For some people, it was about paying tribute to a loved one. Or supporting a good cause. Or identifying with Lance Armstrong's amazing story. Or participating in a trend by emulating the many celebrities who wore it. All these motivations came together in a thing that was almost arbitrary.
The Livestrong bracelet has replaced the "lowest common denominator" idea in a more fragmented culture and become the "murkiest common denominator."
Q: In several places in the book, you throw in historical context and precedents for what’s going on in the consumer marketplace today. Are you saying nothing has changed?
A: No, but I think it's important to understand that consumers have been complaining about and skeptical of advertising for as long as advertising has existed. Marketers have complained about consumer resistance the whole time, too. None of that's new, and it's important to see what's not new if you want to figure out what is.
Media coverage of how technology empowers consumers has tended to gloss over how technology empowers marketers. Marketers see the various threats to traditional modes of persuasion, and have invented new ones, ranging from product placement to online campaigns to word-of-mouth marketing.
As for the latter, we've always trusted our friends more than television ads. Only recently have marketers figured out how to tap that directly by signing up tens of thousands of folks who volunteer to get products early and talk them up and so on. This leverages the "endowment effect" (the tendency to overvalue something simply because we own it), and, in effect, converts your friends into a marketing medium. That's new.
Q: Is "I buy, therefore I am" just as common today as it was 100 years ago?
A: I think it's more true. A century ago, you wouldn't sell deodorant as pop culture. But that's how Axe, to cite one example from the book, is sold today. The ante is upped on what a brand can "mean," and consumers keep buying it. Another example from the book is Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, which took on a meaning as a protest brand -- a brand protesting branding. That's a meaning consumers created.
Q: Conventional wisdom tells us that time was all a company had to do was put a 30-second ad on television and bingo-bango, market share. But is advertising really dead?
A: I reject the premise of your question!
I've always wanted to say that.
Seriously, it's easy to exaggerate the past effectiveness of 30-second ads. After all, brands failed and agencies got fired in eras past, as they have in every era. Consumers have never been zombies who would simply buy anything the TV set told them to. Yes, some dubious stuff succeeded along the way -- but dubious stuff is succeeding now, too. Any marketing campaign that relied exclusively on 30-second ads would have a tough time. But there aren't many campaigns like that -- the need to be "media neutral" is universal, as far as I can tell. Is anyone left saying that their brand should be promoted only by 30-second ads?
Then again, I'm not sure if the 30-second ad will ever disappear. Apart from shows like "American Idol," and sports events, there's news channels and the proliferation of TV in public places, like the gas pump, where it can't be TiVoed. Let's not forget only a fifth of American homes have DVRs. If TV ads ever disappear, it won't matter because the marketing industry has adjusted far more quickly, and aggressively, than consumers have obtained DVRs.
Q: Great products and services don't need to advertise while inferior ones do. Agree or disagree?
A: For Apple -- a company that's widely lauded for innovative products -- wouldn't agree. I remember talking to someone at Apple and expecting him to say something about how the iPod "sells itself" or whatever. When I floated that, he laughed at me.
So ... draw your own conclusions!
Q: Customer collaboration is a hot topic these days, especially for defining the meaning of a brand. You say this isn’t so new, and one of your examples is Timberland. How so?
A: Timberland once had a specific and well-defined meaning: functionality. In the 1980s through the early 1990s, it was adopted by a different consumer for different reasons. At first, it was a hip-hop consumer, then a style consumer as the hip-hop aesthetic rippled out into the broader culture. Timberland didn't understand what was happening and was afraid that if they started chasing this consumer, they'd alienate their base and lose the meaning of the brand.
Eventually, the company capitulated -- it started making style books and is in search of new style hits to keep up its $1.6 billion revenue. The days of declining to advertise in Vibe are over.
This had nothing to do with the Internet, and nothing to do with Timberland "allowing" customers to "collaborate." Consumers determine brand meaning whether anyone "allows" them to or not. And they don't need a special website to do it.
Q: You think we're not so immune to branding and logos as some of us think we are. How so, and do you include yourself in that?
A: Sure, although I didn't used to. For me, the breakthrough was Nike buying Converse. I'd already been writing about branding and approaching the subject as an above-it-all journalist. I was the outsider, the detached observer, unaffected by things I was documenting. As a business journalist, I have great respect for Nike. As a consumer, I would never, ever, wear the swoosh.
I'd always worn Converse sneakers since my teen years. I never said to myself, "I wear Converse sneakers to identify with my rebel rocker heroes." Nobody has those conscious thoughts. But I was bothered that Converse would be owned by Nike. I wasn't sure I could wear Converse anymore because somehow its "meaning" had changed.
Then I caught myself: If I'm so immune to "brand meaning," why am I having a crisis over sneakers?
It was a reality check. It's something I consider every time someone tells me that brands mean nothing to them. It affected my approach to the book, which is aimed at people who have the mindset I used to have. We're better off if we get over being brandproof and embrace the idea that this stuff does have meaning.
Even people who resist brand meaning recognize that material culture and consumer decisions have consequences for the planet and our own sense of satisfaction. If we really want to be in control in a meaningful way, approach the dialogue with eyes open. That's the only way to make decisions we really want to make.
Interested in a free copy of Rob's book? Go to the Society for Word of Mouth (registration is free) and add a comment to this forum post about Rob's book. Deadline for the book giveaway is Friday, July 18 at 5 pm CDT. We'll give 5 copies away (to be drawn randomly from forum participants).
June 16, 2008
How the book publishing industry should reinvent itself
The book industry isn't well, and BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter thinks he has a solution.
On the Harvard Business Publishing blog, Dave lays out an alternative to the current antiquated system:
- Authors package books on their own.
- Authors distribute digital copies of books for free to attract readers and identify markets. They use self-distribution tools to sell as many books as they can.
- Publishers find authors based on strong word of mouth of digital distribution, then pay a licensing fee for distribution rights for serving an initial marketplace of buyers (note: potential business model for a plucky entrepreneur: track the ‘response’ of free book downloads as a data set for publishers to review opportunities).
- Publishers tweak the final manuscript as necessary, print books and distribute them.
- In this scenario, authors prove their ability to deliver a good book and an audience before a publisher invests. Publishers reduce up-front production costs and the risk of betting on authors that can’t produce, and increase the odds they will get results.
Dave eats his own dog food by self-publishing his new new book, "The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II," in both digital and analog (paperback) formats. A few things you should know about the book:
- It's on Amazon here
- Read it for free here
- There is no "Word of Mouth Manual, Volume I"
- There is a monkey on the cover
- The cover is also entirely water resistant and sized to be used as a rainhat
- Warning: there are many mentions of BzzAgent*
- It's 117 pages of entertainment from a guy who's passionate about word of mouth
* While we have not always agreed with some of BzzAgent's practices, it's important to get more people talking about word of mouth.
We're giving away four copies of the paperback version to people who join the discussion on SWOM about Dave's book. Join us by 5 pm CDT Friday, June 20 to be eligible to win one of the copies, which will be given away randomly.
