Marketing Magic

Benefits of Social Media

Last night Mack Collier posed a question on Plurk, and in no time there was a lively discussion that included bright, energetic social media newbs, and industry veterans such as Mack and Connie Reece. The very cool thing is that these generous social media veterans stayed up late, sharing their experiences and wisdom with people as fast as they could fire the questions. The conversation was happening so fast it was almost impossible to keep up without loading the whole page and reading from the top. 

Where else and how else could people have such easy, daily access to some of the brightest minds in their field? Free?

Many kudos to Mack and Connie, whose generosity in sharing time and knowledge day after day is both amazing and inspirational. 

What about you? If you know someone who does not understand how social media can open eyes, stimulate creative thinking, present business opportunities, and open brand new worlds of wildly interesting stuff, show them this page.

How Much Time per Day to Blog

And if YOU have not joined Twitter, Plurk, and some of the other sites, what on earth are you waiting for?

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Truth in Advertising

Well, it had to happen. We have all seen those college advertisements that paint an unrealistic picture of what life is like on campus. They are scrupulously inclusive, taking great care to have representation from every conceivable ethnic and/or interest group. Gorgeous students are shown in happy interaction with other similarly gorgeous students and in serious but informative classes with tweed-clad professors who are spreading their wisdom with a cheerful avuncularity that has everyone smiling.

Frisbees abound. It rains only at night, and the weather is always warm enough to allow shorts, halters and titillating glimpses (tasteful of course) of badonkadonk. Nobody ever fails, and graduates move on to bright, lucrative futures in medicine, law, rocket science or serving humanity.

As a result, all of the college ads, and most of the websites, look exactly the same. There  is no differentiation, whatsoever. Of course, there is safety in this similarity. If you do exactly what is expected, and exactly what everyone else is doing, no one can criticize you.

But they can make fun of you. Check out this video!

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

This is similar to what I was getting at in my blogpost of yesterday. When you have a commercial or an advertisement that has to go through the management gauntlet for approval, you end up with something that is indistinct and boring and utterly forgettable.It's a complete waste of time. And money.

And the truth is, it doesn't have to be that way. Take a look at some of the excellent college marketing that is being done by the smart people at abeedle.com.

Here is a link to the video page of Kettering University. Watch the adventures of Stickman. It probably took an unbelievable long time to get these short flash presentations approved by all of the marketing experts on campus, but the result is something that is interesting, fun and above all, remarkable.

The result? Potential students love the videos, and send a link to their friends. Applications are way up at Kettering University. And so is the quality of students they are enrolling.

Remarkable beats banal. Every single day.

Commercials the Suits Hate

What is it about great advertising that terrifies C Suite types?

The same people who are quick to fire the CMO and offer unsolicited opinions concerning what works in marketing are made to quake in their wingtips with truly breakthrough creative.I do love the stories.

For instance, take a look at what most advertising mavens consider to be the best TV ad of all time. Then consider that the Apple Board wanted to kill it. Too edgy. Steve Jobs and Woz would not hear of it though, and offered to pay for it themselves if the Board wussed out.

And then there is the fantasic commercial from Zazoo that would NEVER be aired in the states. Its message is compelling though, as you will see. This commercial, though too racy for the FCC, has gone WAY viral in YouTube and Spike TV.

The lesson?

The more people who have to approve your marketing and advertising, the more innocuous, bland, ineffective and boring it will be. If everybody is happy, you're wasting your money. 

I do focus groups for a living. But I never do them to test creative. The result would be a watered down fiasco of mediocrity.

Advertising needs to stride into the party, make some noise, step on some toes, and command everyone's attention. Not shuffle meekly in, eyes cast at the floor, hoping not to offend. It needs to motivate people to action - not stupor. 

So do it! Push the envelope! Take a chance! 

It's the only way you're ever going to create something remarkable. 

Standing Out

Marketing is all about being noticed, isn't it?

Well, no, it's more than that. It's about positioning your company in a positive way. It's about being noticed, making a good impression and being remembered in a world that has an awful lot of marketing noise.

I'm betting, that after reading this blog post from the excellent Cheryl Smith, you will be able to think of one more thing that you can do to help yourself or your company stand out.

Handwritten Notes, Connections, and Lost Luggage.

It's a good story as well as smart advice. Enjoy!

The Question of Plurk

Twitter has been twacked lately - in twubble - whatever one wants to term it. It has grown by serious leaps and bounds over the past few months, and seems to be reaching the point, as my Grandma used to say, where its eyes are bigger than its stomach. The Twitter stat blog does not shed much light - the most recent information is from March 14, 2008 and concerns the SXSW conference - which is probably the event that catapulted Twitter into the ionosphere of popularity - you remember the whole Saracuda debacle that hit all of the newsfeeds.

Anyway, we have been seeing WAY too much of the Whale recently - the one that informs us of Twitter's having "exceeded" its Tweet capacity, and asking us to kindly return later. When it works it's been slower than the bell on the last day of school. This is problematic for a lot of folks who use Twitter as a source of inspiration, agitation, investigation or recreation over the course of their workday. Laura Fitton wrote a beautiful description of the Village of Twitter, and the way this service has transformed the @home workplace for many people around the world. When it works, that is.

So with Twitter frustration reaching a peak over the past several weeks, people have been looking at alternatives. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to score an invitation to Jaiku. People have taken a hard look again at Friendfeed, which is more of an aggregation service for many of the other web 2.0 networks, and not really the same thing.

On Monday, Twitter was all abuzz about Plurk, so I decided to give it a look. I joined in a flash, and in seconds was posting "Plurks" to the horizontal timeline that made it easy to see 1) who was saying what when, and 2) who was saying what in response to the original plurk. In no time, I had added 50 "friends" from Twitter, then friends of friends, and before I knew it my timeline was ablaze with plurks.

Too ablaze. It was overwhelming. Impossible. My head was swimming.

Plus, it seemed to be reading "backwards" - the timeline moves right (older) to left (newer). Since we read and write left to right, it seemed odd. WTF?

I had jumped in too far too fast. Wayne Sutton was one of my first friends, and asked me if I had read the "safe-plurking guide". Of course, being chromosomatically averse to "directions", I had not. Nor had I read Plurk's FAQ. I had jumped in and begun playing and posting, and now was finding that there was just WAY too much conversation to keep track of. Time to scale back, and see what the real possibilities are for this service. I had found the way it was NOT going to work.

Everyone seemed to be at about the same place. Wayne Sutton was asking questions and trying to make sense of it. I followed his lead and started doing the same thing. Here is what we found. Following is a cool skitch graphic from Wayne.

There are a lot of things to LIKE about Plurk.

And here is another one from Wayne:

If you're interested, here's a link to all of Wayne's Plurk Screenshots. Way cool. The dude is good. But we knew that already.

I also like the way that on Plurk one can ask questions, and everyone who follows can see the thread, the timeline and what others have said in response. You don't have to be a follower or friend to respond. I asked followers on Plurk what they liked, disliked, and what they perceive as the essential difference between Twitter and Plurk. To make it even easier to see, I can reduce the noise by asking the timeline to show only "my" Plurks and relevant responses. Screenshots follow:

 

 

And like anything, one gets from the service what one puts in. If you want to use Plurk to *flirt*, there are a number of people who will be more than happy to float your boat. There is much more of this going on at  Plurk than at Twitter, and it is much more suggestive. The political discussion has a harder, more polemical edge to it. All in all, much of the chat seems much less  business-oriented, and more "social" - with all of the concomitant norms and standards of behavior - or lack thereof on the part of some. As one said, Twitter is work - Plurk is the party!

As on Twitter, one can "unfollow", but there is no way to "block" those whom you find offensive.

There are some other curiosities as well. Plurk awards "karma" based upon the number of people you invite, your followers and other criteria. At higher karmic levels, you have access to cooler emoticons, like dancing bananas and lips that make kisses. It definitely gets competitive, and you find yourself looking for ways to increase your karmic  footprint.

That's when you get in trouble. It seems one of Plurk's flaws is that you need to have a lot of friends and followers to have interesting or well covered conversations, yet if you follow too many your timeline will drive you batshit crazy. Right now with 42 "friends", I have 61 unread Plurks. Wayne Sutton has 255 friends - I can only imagine what his timeline screen looks like. Thankfully, it does have a "mark all as read" button for those who tend to OCD.

One potentially VERY cool feature is that Plurk has the ability to add "cliques", or interest groups that have only people associated with a cause, a particular business, an idea. This has been the one thing missing from Twitter that I think has the potential to be a HUGE plus for Plurk if they pull off the execution well. We have needed a way to distill and aggregate similar ideas and threads and populations. Imagine a "clique" with only your company's employees. Or one of local Obama supporters. You could move easily from there to the "world" to ask a question, then back to your clique with the answer.

All in all, Plurk is still evolving and finding its voice. People are coming up with ways every hour to make the service more useful. Leading the way is, once again, early-adopter and my hero Wayne Sutton. Here's a link to the suggestions; the page is too long to post here! Users are figuring out the ways to use their cell phones, link to pics and stories, and generally make the service more useful and less a waste of time.

Brand new suggestions include using the Plurk timeline as a reminder service for appointments or for post-it style notes. I suspect we'll see more as innovative people begin to use Plurk and develop fun add-ons like a Plurk summize or Plurk-local. Someone is going to have to develop a Wikipedia guide to the vocabulary that is growing exponentially. Whoever heard of a plurkgasm before yesterday?

To summarize: By all means, jump in start to plurk. The only way to add friends for now is to take your name out of your plurk homepage, and type in the person you want to find. For instance to find me, remove your name from your Plurk homepage and type in frankmartin. Most Twitterati are keeping the same user names (except someone apparently hijacked "Scobleizer"), making it easy to find your Twitter friends.

Just be careful about adding followers and following - follow those whom you are sure will be saying things you want to hear!

And as always, think of ways that Plurk can be used to advance our professions - I challenge you to make the most of Plurk for yourself and your family and your friends and your clients.

Use it to build. To create. To learn. To love.

That's REALLY what we're all here for, right? :-)

14 Ways People Screw Up Focus Groups

Common Focus Group Mistakes By People Who Don’t know Better, and by those who do, but make them anyway.

Because sometime doing great work is first an understanding and preventing the ways it can go wrong.



1. Bringing qualitative tools to a quantitative fight - If you want to know how many  
people will like  something, focus groups are not the tool. If you want to understand why
they will like it, they are.

2. Treating research as an expense not an investment - yeah, I know it goes on the expense side of the ledger. But you have to make the “go” decision for research fully expecting to get a return on your investment of time and money. If you can’t understand how research will either a) save you money or b) help you spend money more effectively, don’t do it.

3. Thinking moderators have to look like the target participant group - (Black moderators for African American groups, female for women, etc.) Participants will talk a lot more if they think there is a high likelihood the moderator might not “get it”. And the great moderators will play up that perspective.

4. Trying to moderate your own groups. You can’t be objective about your own organization, or tell the CEO he’s whack when it comes to including questions that are irrelevant to the objectives. See this post to understand what a professional moderator can bring to the table.

5. Using the Moderator as a vendor rather than a partner. Most experienced moderators have been through the mill a few times, and have seen your problem or situation before. They will have some insight regarding the way the groups should be organized to help you get the most from the process. They will have recommendations as to types of questions, ways to dig deeper, and questioning techniques no one in your organization has ever heard of. You don't hire a doc and tell her how to do the surgery.

6. Using the same moderator for every project - sure the wonks in engineering are comfortable with him, but as much as I hate to admit it to my faithful clients, fresh and diverse moderating perspectives can mean more useful results and better marketing decisions. They will make you think and evaluate in different ways.

7. Going with the low bid - This is especially prevalent with companies that don’t have a lot of experience with focus groups, and have a hard time understanding the difference a moderator can make to the overall success or failure of the project. You will pay more for the better moderators, who charge more because they can, sort of like the best surgeons. They bring more value and more experience and will do a more complete job. All the great moderators will admit they a) broke into the business by charging less, and b) were nowhere near as good then as they are now. If you hire an inexperienced moderator, make no mistake about it, you are paying for their training. Be careful. It takes more training and certification to become an Equine Sports Massage Therapist than it does to become a “moderator”.

8. Trying to do too much with the groups. The temptation is always there. While we have customers in the room let’s ask them what they think of our website! Don’t do it. Stick to the project objectives, and go deep, not broad. You’ll get much better understanding that way. Give the participants time to go beyond the initial, top-line answers.

9. Not allowing time for spontaneous discussion. Sometimes the participants know better than you what you need to be talking about. Listen. Don’t try to control every second of the discussion.

10. Too much diversity - Who can argue against diversity? I can. Sometimes you should NOT mix disparate groups. If you are a college and you want to understand what high school juniors and seniors are looking for in your website, you will not want to blend those two groups of students together in one group; they are at two separate points in the college decision process, and you need to understand BOTH positions.

11. Not enough organizational diversity in the back room. The people viewing the groups need to come from all over the organization marketing, customer service, operations, information technology - getting a variety of perspectives and experiences. They will all hear different things during the groups, and the ensuing reconciliation of ideas and brainstorms can be richly rewarding. Note: if the CEO comes you'll have a lot of people there looking serious and taking notes. Encourage that.

12. Not taking advantage of the energy in the back room following the groups. Yeah, I know it’s 10:00 and everyone wants to go home, chill and watch Leno, but take 15 minutes and list the top clarifications, confirmations, surprises and insights derived from the groups while the information is still fresh. Then get together early the next morning and talk about it some more.

13. Depreciating participant opinions because they a) aren’t consistent with yours, or b) come from someone who is wearing stretch pants that could cover the state of New Jersey. Listen to what the participants are saying; don’t discount their opinions because of their socioeconomic status, because they don’t look like you, or because they frequently dangle modifiers.

14.  Trying to quantify the findings - if you catch yourself saying “well, half the group said they would buy...”, lie down until the impulse passes. Instead, seek to understand what triggered that decision, and how you can induce more of them.

While these are some of the common mistakes, there are many more uncommon ones that can be just as devastating to the efficacy of the results. In fact, the biggest mistake companies make is never doing focus groups at all, because they a) don't understand the value that can be added, or the insight that can be derived, or b) don't want to spend the money. This is no less foolish than the General who wants to rush to the attack because he doesn't want to take the time and energy to look at the aerial reconnaissance photos of the enemy position.

Better marketing is always achieved by those who first take the time to understand. 

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Customer Service Gone Horribly Wrong

My wife, young son and I took this afternoon off to visit the neighborhood Carmike Cinema to see the latest Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the  Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It promised to be, as one reviewer said, a "rip-roaring geezer romp"! We were excited! My older son had seen the movie Wednesday at a midnight showing, but mentioned the theater had some problems and Indiana Jones did not actually begin until 1:30. That should have been a red flag.

We picked up the tickets early, to prevent having to wait in line on a busy holiday weekend. To ensure we could sit together in what was bound to be a packed theater, we arrived 20 minutes early.

There are about six registers in the theater concession area, but there was one line open for food. This in the same theater that ran out of popcorn when we saw Spiderman 3. Have you ever heard of a theater running out of popcorn - a cash cow that reportedly pads their returns with a 90% profit margin? This same theater has fired teenagers who do not upsell their secret shoppers. The people in front of us became exasperated and went on to their movie. Lost revenue. Others saw the line and never joined it. More lost revenue.

I remembered that the last time I had visited this cinema one of the urinals in the men's room had been ducttaped "out of order". Ugh. Why didn't I think of that before?

When we finally made it to the front of the line with 5 minutes to spare, the poor overworked and underappreciated teenage concessessionista spilled my son's popcorn all over the counter, cash register and floor in front of the only open window. The people behind us in line were starting to make unpleasant noises. No one was there to clean up the mess.

When we finally had our food, we moved on to the ticket taker - who was nowhere in sight! People were standing there, clutching their tickets, unsure which of the ten theaters was showing their movie. I noticed the movie names and times were listed on marquees over the doors, but was told that information was not necessarily correct. There was no one to ask.

We decided to venture into the theater that mentioned our movie and time, and hope it was the right one. Previews were playing, and they suddenly stopped dead. The theater went pitch black. A tremulous female voice asked out loud, "Is this Narnia"? Patrons were trying to sit, but could not see. Some opened their cell phones and used the display light to guide their way to empty seats.

Fed up, and losing the modicum of patience I had left at that point, I went looking for an employee. No one. No ticket agent. No manager. Only the poor beleaguered concessionista and the lady taking ticket money up front.

I went back to my seat. Previews started again, and the manager came in and announced in a loud voice that this movie was to be Indiana Jones, and anyone hoping to see Narnia needed to come with him to the right theater. Grumbling, several people left with him. Others muttered they were never again returning to this theater. I wondered who could blame them.

This time when they pointed out the fire exits, I paid attention.

The movie, thankfully, showed without interruption. When it ended, as we were leaving we saw the manager outside having a cigarette as new patrons were entering. There was still only one popcorn line open.

Across town, there is another movie theater, owned by Regal, which is a completely different experience. It shows the exact same movies. Customers pick up their tickets, move quickly and efficiently through concession and are pointed to the correct theaters with ease.

According to its web page, Carmike has 283 theaters and 2427 screens in 37 states. Monday, May 12, 2008, Carmike reported a loss of 4.3 million dollars (or .34 a share), compared with a loss of 3.7 million in the same quarter a year ago - this while their general and administrative expenses are down! (On Carmike's own website, the most recent financial information is from 2005. They update their movie listings and times, but not their financial information.)

So Carmike is reducing employee and overhead expense. But at what cost? There are two ways to go out of business: your costs can be too high - or your revenues can be too low. Let's consider this issue for a second.

• What is the opportunity cost of running out of popcorn for Spiderman 3?

• What is the lost revenue when someone notices one concession line is open but is twelve people deep, and he decides it's not worth the wait?

• What is the lost revenue when the local newspaper reports the theater is firing teenagers for not upselling the supersizes and disgusted parents and their friends stay away?

• How much revenue wil be lost when today's customers tell their friends about their Carmike experience, and those friends head to Regal for their Indy movie?

• And how much revenue will be foregone when patrons decide that the convenience of this Carmike theater is not worth the slipshod maintenance, the slow, crappy service, and they drive 15 minutes across town to the cleaner, quicker Regal theater that is showing the exact same movies?

The lesson? If you think it's expensive to train employees, keep the physical property maintained, hold sufficient staffing levels, and sustain high standards of service, consider what it costs when you don't.

And think about what is happening to Carmike.

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Good Enough is NOT...

Too often in marketing, we stop short. We do enough to get the basic job done, but before we have created something remarkable. The goal of this blog post is to make you take a look at every thing you do - at ALL of your creative output - and ask yourself two questions:

1. Is it "wallable"?
2. Does it have a wienie?

If you're not satisfied that the answer to those two questions is YES - get back to the anvil and keep pounding. There is already too much mediocrity out there; we don't need any more.

Aim to amaze. Shoot to thrill. 

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New Rules of Viral Marketing

David Meerman Scott has written an excellent E-book entitled "The New Rules of Viral Marketing."

It's available in PDF format. Download it, read it and live it. Pass it on to your friends and clients who may be interested.

Unleash the virus! It's too good to keep to yourself.

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Customer Service an Afterthought to Sales?

Remember the old adage that a happy customer will tell one person; an unhappy one will tell 10?

Change that to "A happy customer will tell one person - an unhappy one will tell 1000."

And then it will get tweeted so that 2200 more see it.

Web 2.0 has changed forever the game of customer service. Are you taking pains to promise the moon, and then overdeliver?

Are you making sure your clients understand the stakes of screwing up now?

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