Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The difference between marketing and advertising is…lemonade

 
Okay, that’s not exactly true. What I mean here is that the difference between advertising and marketing is easy to explain using a lemonade analogy. Follow me on this one. 

Many folks, especially those outside of marketing, get confused by advertising. It's the shiny object, the one we see entirely too many times each day, so it becomes the face of marketing. It’s what everyone thinks of as marketing.

But it’s not marketing.

Marketing is the thought behind the ads. It's the strategy and the planning that inspires the ad. And it’s the measurement after the ad has run to see how effective the ad has been, whether it should run again, where, how often, etc.

Marketing is also the planning around what happens after someone responds to the ad. It’s the sales force that answers questions and finds the right solution; the website that accepts your order and the distribution center that sends you what you need. But, back to the analogy…

When making lemonade these days, there’s typically a dry mix and water (no real lemons were harmed during this analogy). Put the mix and water together and you have a refreshing drink. But, because this is a marketing analogy, it’s not that simple; let’s deconstruct that a bit.

Advertising is the water in our analogy; very vibrant and visible, providing dynamic motion and sound. It’s the most noticeable ingredient in our little drink. But, without the flavor (the marketing, which you’ve probably deduced, is the powdery lemonade mix here), water is tasteless and not very exciting.

Sure, it moves around and splashes. But, without any flavor, people will soon move on and forget all about our drink (that is, our brand). It’s the concentrated flavors in the powder — the marketing — that gives our brand, I mean, drink, both its attractiveness and staying power.

The research and strategy behind the message is all packed tightly into the mix, waiting to burst out and influence people’s behavior. But, admittedly, the mix itself isn’t much without the water, either. It’s rather dry and no one can see all of the flavor packed in there. It’s hard to experience, to say the least.

Clearly, marketing and advertising need each other. Neither works well without the other and it’s good to understand what each brings to the party. It’s also good for both sides to have a healthy respect for each other and what they can become when they work together.

So, the next time someone you know is confused about the difference between advertising and marketing, make them some lemonade.


Monday, February 24, 2014

The one thing that may be missing from your Content Marketing — independence.


In the post-digital world, technology is allowing brands to quickly become their own best media outlets, replacing the need to buy or rent space from more traditional media.

But the one thing consumers valued most from traditional media is in danger of fading away — third party journalistic independence. This creates an opportunity for brands to stand out in an otherwise crowded marketplace.

Media outlets can certainly have their own political leanings but, in general, journalists have operated separately from the advertising department and that church-and-state separation is at risk.

As brands create and publish more of their own content today, they have the opportunity (if not the obligation) to present more of a balanced viewpoint. I believe there will almost certainly be a backlash against brands that don’t deliver on traditional media’s independent view. So, what’s a brand to do?

Awareness is the first step
As with many things, once brands recognize this as a potential issue, they’re well on their way to dealing with it. As brands continue to hire journalists and create newsroom-type atmospheres to deliver on ContentMarketing’s promise, it’s critical that your audiences feel some level of independence from your ‘reporting’.

Of course, your consumers are savvy enough to know you’re behind the messaging. But they will appreciate (and reward) brands that make an effort toward an unbiased, third party view that helps them look smart or solve a problem. In fact, they will come to expect it. Here are a few suggestions for how to deliver on it:

Create standards (and stick to them)
For centuries, consumers have relied upon the so-called Fourth Estate of journalism to provide an unbiased viewpoint and protect the public interest. The term comes from 19th century England, where journalists were counted on to keep the first three estates (the clergy and the upper and lower houses of parliament) honest. Make sure your ‘newsroom’ understands where the line is between helping consumers solve problems (Content Marketing) and outright promotion (traditional marketing). The masses surely will.

Be honest, you’re being recorded
Everyone knows honesty is critical but it can be tempting to be somewhat less than truthful when your brand is under attack. Be honest anyway. In this age of 24/7 surveillance, your actions will almost certainly be played back to you on a screen somewhere when the storm is over; make sure your team behaves in a way that will make you all feel good when you see that behavior again.

Be curious
One of the most admired traits of a journalist is curiosity. If it seems like there’s a story to be told, find out what that story is and tell it. People will appreciate you (and your brand) for it.

Be timely
Gone are the days when tomorrow’s newspaper is the source for the latest news. But journalists have always been the first to break the story and that continues in the modern age. Caution here — don’t be first at the risk of being wrong. Keep in mind the Russian proverb often borrowed by Ronald Reagan: trust but verify.

Be different
Of course, being balanced and unbiased isn’t easy, especially internally where brand managers and others may expect you to lean toward their perspective. The real opportunity here is to play it down the middle and replace what people are starting to miss from traditional journalism and resist pushing your product or service.

As nearly everyone continues to rush into the Content Marketing space, you can help your brand stand out and earn the attention of your audience by maintaining the balance and independence they have always appreciated from journalism.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Content Marketing or Content Management? Yes.

Content is just one of those words. It can mean so many things to so many people. Almost everyone has a different mental image when they hear it.

Its meaning can be as generic as whatever fills a container, whether that container is a web page, a brochure or an email message (“This message contains no content” — sound familiar?). Or it can be something very specific, like the copy created for an editorial hole, such as an article in a publication.

And that’s just what content means in the marketing world.

The meaning of content can vary more in larger organizations. By contrast, in a small business setting, content can have a very specific meaning. This article is about what content can mean in larger organizations. So, if you’re running your own small business, you may want to jump off here and check out Kerin Foster’s article, Content Marketing for small business: the five Ws or Christina Warren’s 5 lightweight CMS alternatives for small business.

Okay, back to the big company folks. To be clear, this isn’t an argument in favor of either Content Management or Content Marketing — it’s an argument for both. And it’s also an attempt to differentiate between the two.

The practice of Content Management is all about tracking, capturing, synthesizing and distributing consistent messages. It’s been around for decades and its value lies in the consistency and efficiency it can deliver. These days, it’s usually accomplished systematically and these products are often called enterprise content management (or ECM) systems.

Content Marketing is more of a philosophical change in the way a brand thinks about creating, curating and delivering messages to a specific audience. It’s all about developing useful messages that help people solve the problems they’re facing and abandoning messages that talk about products or services — people simply don’t have to listen to these anymore. The usefulness of Content Marketing attracts people to a brand, rather than pushing messages at them the old interruptive-marketing way (I’m looking at you, advertising).

Of course, technology is at the heart of all of this. Relatively recent technological advances allow brands to create and deliver their own messages today without having to buy or rent time on traditional media, becoming media companies themselves in the process.

But, this same technology also allows consumers to construct nearly insurmountable barriers (through tools like DVRs, Netflix, etc.), making it virtually impossible to reach them effectively with the paid media of old. Need evidence? Just look at the $40 billion in ad revenue lost by newspapers since 2000 (Newspaper Association of America) or the 200 million fewer pieces of mail each year (Annual Report of the Postmaster General)

The change is well underway. All that’s left for us to do is decide how we will react to it.

My suggestion is to embrace both Content Management and Content Marketing by creating a content strategy that includes both. The strategy is the key, especially in larger organizations where literally thousands of people are disseminating messages for the same brand everyday.

For example, where I work, we estimate that at least 5,000 people are sending messages to customers or prospects on a daily basis. I think you can see where both the consistency of these messages (Content Management) and how the message is structured (Content Marketing) are hugely important. That’s why we’re creating a content strategy that ties them all together.

Though daunting, the idea of 5,000 people creating and sending messages becomes a little more palatable (if not exciting) when we’re all following the same plan.

Of course, communicating a content strategy is also very important in larger organizations. To be able to communicate it effectively, I’ve borrowed a model from the business strategy world, the strategy map.

While the actual content strategy is more detailed, I’ve found that a content strategy map (yes, I made that up) allows me to quickly explain where we can go — elevator-speech style — when we employ a content strategy. It also allows me to garner the support I need from some, while allaying the fears of others who may need reassurance.

Bottom line, please don’t feel like you have to decide whether to use Content Management or Content Marketing — create a content strategy (and a content strategy map) that includes how your organization should use both…and enjoy the ride!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Real time marketing isn’t marketing at all


It was the 2013 Super Bowl (am I allowed to say that?) and the worst thing possible happened during the third quarter — a power outage. Fortunately for the NFL, the social media folks at Oreo were paying attention and bailed them out when they famously used Twitter to remind viewers they can still ‘dunk in the dark’.

Everyone raved at the quick-witted, real time response. Well, everyone in marketing did, anyway. But did anyone else? Perhaps not.

Forbes contributor Carrie Kerpen captured this point well in a recent article about how real time marketing is mostly just marketers talking to each other. And Tim Peterson from Ad Age sat brands down for the bad news a day after the Big Game with his article, Go home, real-time marketing. You’re drunk.

It made me smile
I remember my initial reaction to the 2013 Oreo tweet — I smiled. And that might have been enough for the Oreo folks; if it made people smile when they thought of the Oreo brand, perhaps that’s as a good return on what was probably a small investment.

Hey, if this was the way the whole real-time-marketing thing was going to work, I was happy. As a writer, it didn’t seem far-fetched that someday I, too, could make people smile.

But then nothing happened.

Oh, it wasn’t as if brands weren’t trying to land the haymaker punch. Many tried to force it and failed miserably — you know who you are, JC Penney, so there’s no need to name names. While the magic combination of wit, timing and a bit of luck required for real time marketing is rare, that wasn’t stopping some brands from trying it anyway.

It wasn’t until the 2014 Grammy’s — when Arby’s called out Pharrell Williams for wearing its hat in a brilliant, perfectly timed response — that we saw anything resembling success from real time marketing again.

Even the 2014 Super Bowl didn’t deliver the holy grail of social marketing smiles this year. In fact, the game was so out-of-hand that most were hoping, maybe even praying, for a blackout or a well-timed and clever tweet. No such luck.

Of course, Esurance did their thing, and did it well…but that was planned months in advance. Even Oreo sat out the game this year, perhaps knowing they couldn’t top last year.

So, is this real time marketing thing just too difficult? Is it worth the effort? And, perhaps most importantly, does it deliver results? If Oreo had earned massive sales from its moment in the sun, we would have heard about it by now, right?

To be sure, followers and tweets increased a great deal for Oreo in the days after the Super Bowl. But what about sales? Does real time marketing translate to the bottom line? Should it?

Company sales increased…modestly
Mondelez, Oreo’s parent company, reported sales increases in the first quarter (following that aforementioned Big Game) that were nothing to write home about. The company grouped Oreos’ growth in with other company-owned brands like Chips Ahoy, Cadbury chocolate, Stride gum and, of all things, Tang.

“Each posted strong increases,” the company said in a release. Apparently, ‘strong increases’ in the mature market of cookies and candy is 7.5%. Respectable growth, for sure, but certainly not groundbreaking.

So we’re left to assume that the millions of likes and favorites didn’t translate into millions in sales, or at least not millions more. And maybe that’s okay.

As of this writing, it’s probably too soon to know if the Arby’s Grammy tweet will translate into sales. I don’t even know if that was the goal. My point is that we should all be clear about what real time marketing can and cannot do and set expectations (and resources) accordingly.

And we should probably change the name, because this kind of real time marketing isn’t really marketing at all. It’s not planned and doesn’t appear to deliver bottom line results.

So, while this practice may be fine as an additional boost when circumstances are absolutely perfect for a specific brand (see Oreo and Arby’s), it shouldn’t be mistaken for a marketing strategy. And, in the vast majority of cases, it’s simply not worth the risk.

So let’s call this thing what it is — hype. Granted, ‘real time hype’ doesn’t have the same ring to it, but it’s much closer to the truth.

Monday, February 3, 2014

2014 Super Bowl ads — one person’s take



The crop of ads this year weren’t stellar by anyone's standards. Fortunately the game was even worse, so many of the ads received more attention than they might have.

That can be a good thing or a bad thing. In this case, the ads were just good enough to pick up the slack and keep many people from abandoning the game altogether. Fox should be grateful for that. And the $4.5 million-a-spot doesn’t hurt either.

Here are my tops:

1. Cheerios: Gracie
The message is great. The casting is better. I choose to think they didn’t make this spot to adjoin the whole multi-racial debate; either way, it rises above all of that noise to put smiles on people’s faces. Just what a brand should want.

2. Radio Shack: Phone call
While the premise is overwhelmingly Super Bowlian, in the end the message is clear — Radio Shack is coming clean, literally, and you need to at least check them out.

3. Budweiser: Puppy love
It seems like Budweiser is almost compelled to do an ad like this.  The fact that they can still get such an emotional reaction from us is a tribute to how good it is.

4. Hyundai: Sixth sense
A great message, especially for parents, is coupled with unbelievably realistic situations that make dad the hero. That the car comes in second is just smart marketing.

5. VW: Wings
Now the quality starts to fall off a bit. This spot is engaging but still relies on some cheap humor— and where are the female engineers, Vdubs?

6. Honda: Hugfest
This spot has to win the award for the simplest (read: cheapest) set up. It keeps you wondering who the advertiser is and it’s actually not a letdown to find out it’s from Honda.

7. Beats: The right music
While a bit expected, the somewhat subtle hint to little red riding hood is nice; and who doesn’t want to see Ellen dance? Okay, with bears though? Super Bowl only, please.

8. Weathertech: You can’t do that
I can’t do what? Tell me! Tell me! Oh, okay. Not bad from a smaller brand.

9. TurboTax: Love hurts
Nice spot for the silent majority who just watch the game because everyone else is and they don’t want to look like an idiot on Monday. And great timing for a tax preparer.

10. Oikos: The spill
I didn’t find this spot as controversial as some, and it was great to see the Full House guys back together again. As long as the target here is women, 35+ (and, for yogurt, it probably is), the message is right on.

And here are my bottom five:

5. Chobani: Bear
This one screams Super Bowl ad. You can almost see how the pitch went: Okay, a bear walks into a store…

4. Chrysler: American Import
While the choice of Bob Dylan is interesting/daring, for Chrysler to keep hitting the American-made theme after being bought out/saved by Fiat just misses. Give it up, boys.

3. H&M: Uncovered
This is the bad side of playing to a target market. Pandering is more like it.

2. Audi: Doberhuahua
This is just stupid. It’s about a car?

1. CarMax: Slow clap
I totally do not get this. Beyond the fact that no one would do this, no one wants this to happen when they buy a car, either. And the look on the teen girl’s face at the end is just odd. Is she his daughter? Is that disapproval? Throw in a random karate kick and we have a loser. Not what you want to leave me with, CarMax.

What are your thoughts?