In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell posits that success is a much about good timing as it is hard work and raw talent.  Perhaps there is no greater evidence of this theory than the Shorty Awards, which launched in December 2008 just as “Twitter was on the cusp of getting really big,” noted co-founder Greg Galant. But to attribute the success of the Shorty Awards to timing alone would be shortsighted, missing one of the most instructive cases for entrepreneurs in the brave new world of Social Media 3.0.   Here are seven insights I gleaned from my interview with Galant:

1. Identify an Unmet Need

Back in late 2008, Greg Galant and his partner Lee Semel at Sawhorse Media, a small web dev shop, recognized both the potential of Twitter and an inherent shortcoming.  Noted Galant, “The thing which made it unique was that all the content was public and people were creating media but there was no easy way to figure out who’s doing good stuff on Twitter by topic.”  Added Galant, “So we had this wacky idea we would create the first ever directory of Twitter and what better way than to crowd source an awards program.”  Wacky or not, within 24 hours of its launch on December 10^th, 2008, Shorty was one of the top trending terms on Twitter, a position it held for the next two months.  And as a result of the Shortys, all the Twitterverse had a real source for the best of the best.

2. Build it Fast AND Build it Smart

Often software entrepreneurs are faced with tradeoffs between speed to market and quality of performance.  Offered Galant, “We came up with the name Shorty Awards, registered the domain and built the whole system in two weekends.”  Despite the speed, it was brilliant in its use of the very medium it was acknowledging and according to Galant was “the first system ever to use public nominees.” The entry form was literally just a tweet like “I nominate @DrewNeisser for #Shorty for marketing brilliance…” and the Shorty site according to Galant, “Would just automatically suck that in, parse it, and figure out what the nomination is for, and then create a leader board out of all the nominees.” That would be like a movie actress nominating herself for an Oscar in the middle of the film!

3. Make it Competitive and Transparent

Awards by their very nature are competitive but part of the genius of the Shorty Awards is that nominees could see how they were doing in real time.  This level of transparency set the Shorty Awards apart from its advertising brethren.  Explained Galant, “there was tons of campaigning, people were tweeting to get people to vote for them, the leader boards were really a strong thing in that people want to be on a top ten list.”  The leader board also had the added value of giving people a reason to constantly come back to ShortyAwards.com.  In fact and most notably, traffic to the Shorty Awards.com website according to Compete.com (see chart) during its first two years was higher than the better known Effies, Clios and the even the coveted Cannes Lions.

4. Bake the Marketing Into the Product

One of the more remarkably aspects of the Shorty Awards case, is that the brand was built according to Galant with “zero marketing dollars.“  A true social media phenomenon, the Shorty Awards garnered 50,000 nominees year 1 and over 300,000 year 2 without spending a single dollar on advertising.   As Galant explained it, “We thought about marketing at the product design stage, focusing on every little angle, how it would market itself, what kind of viral actions will it create, what’s the viral loop, what about it’s really going to resonate with users—that matters far more than how hard you pitch it and everything like that.”  Entrepreneurs out there would be well advised to embrace Galant’s conjecture, “That much of marketing today is done before the launch, it’s in product design.

5. React to the Road not the Map

Every entrepreneur will tell of the importance of reacting to “the road not the map” when rolling out a new product or service.  But few in my experience were as good at observing the changes in the road and reacting accordingly as Galant and Semel.  First, there was the matter of the award ceremony.  Launched without a real business plan, Galant noted “ We hadn’t yet lined up any plans to actually have the ceremony, we didn’t have a sponsor, we didn’t have a venue, we didn’t have a host yet two months later, we pulled the whole thing off.”   Then there were the awards themselves.  Allowing people to make up any category they wanted, when seeing a particular user generated category achieve critical mass, they’d make it official.  Noted Galant, “It never occurred to us to have a video game category for example.”

6. Deliver Genuine Value Across the Board

Before the Shorty Awards became a real business, Galant and his partner had the simple goal of delivering value by “showing the who’s who of social media.”  Once it became clear that there were a lot of people who shared Galant’s desire to “know who’s actually good, who the stars are, who’s mastered the media,” then the challenge shifted to creating value for potential sponsors.  This value came in multiple ways depending on the sponsor.  During the nomination periods, traffic to the website and PR about the awards reached millions.  At the events, sponsors were able to mingle with top tweeters from around the world, the first of which was the largest gathering of its kind.  And because Galant had the foresight to video tape the event, live streams (+20k) and subsequent plays on YouTube (+100k) increased the value for sponsors even further.

7. Learn from Other’s Mistakes (not included in the FastCompany.com post that ran earlier this week)

They say that most entrepreneurs learn from their own mistakes but the great ones learn from the mistakes of others.  Such is the case with Galant and the Shorty Awards.  Noted Galant, “There was one attempt before us to do a Twitter awards thing, but we heard stories where they promised the winner 100 bucks but they couldn’t deliver on that—so we really wanted to do it right.”  So Galant found some sponsors to help cover the costs of the event and charged for attendance, thus ensuring sufficient funding to pull off a NYC-caliber program in their first year.  Year 2 they upped the ante, hosting the event in Manhattan instead of Brooklyn, allowing for greater attendance and more polished experience.

Final Note

The Shorty Awards were profitable in both its first two years, enough so that Galant is now talking to investors about expansion plans. Not bad for a couple of guys who just wanted to figure out who to follow on Twitter.

How American Express turned its OPEN Forum into the quintessential example of Marketing as Service

The great patriot and social media enthusiast Benjamin Franklin would surely enjoy the communications revolution that has swept our fair industry and would have plenty of good advice for modern day practitioners.  Advice well earned.  At 15, he adopted the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood just to get his articles published in his brother’s newspaper.  This ruse pissed off his brother to no end and ultimately forced young Ben to flee to Philly where at the age of 21 he formed an early social network called Junto, a group of “like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community.”

Once in Philadelphia, Franklin quickly distinguished himself as an agent of change, a man Malcolm Gladwell might be forced to describe as connector, maven AND salesman. At 22, he established The Pennsylvania Gazette, essentially a printed blog of his essays and observations, a vehicle that earned him tremendous social currency.  Shortly thereafter, he set up the city’s first library, the Wikipedia of its day, complete with America’s first librarian.  A noted scientist, perhaps his least known invention is the concept of paying it forward, freely sharing his ideas, inventions and on occasion his cash all with the hope that “it may thus go thro’ many hands.”  Clearly, without Franklin there are no open source API’s on Facebook and certainly no #good tweets on Twitter.

Having established his bona fides as social media pioneer let me now call upon the ever-humble B. Franklin to offer us instruction on how modern day marketing patriots can declare their independence from social media silliness.  And while this piece is no Poor Richard’s Almanac, it will approach the topic at hand with a similar clarity of purpose and simplicity in language.  It will also do so knowing Franklin would have supported this author, “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”  Finally, it will encourage marketers to take AIM, a simply acronym that befits a Franklinian approach to social media.

1.  A is for Audit

All too often, marketers take the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach to social media.  The numerous social media pundits who prescribe dabbling over diligence encourage this philosophy.  Back in 1748, Franklin would have warned you of the risks of this approach, noting, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”  Instead, Franklin would have encouraged a rigorous social media audit, offering, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

Hardly revolutionary, a social media audit lays the groundwork for a successful campaign, fulfilling Franklin’s prognostication that, “Diligence is the mother of good luck.”  These audits can be done in-house but as Franklin warned, “Those that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.”  Kinaxis, a supply chain management company, sought the help of Forrester before it went on to triple its leads and double its site traffic via a rigorously planned social media program (see detailed case history http://bit.ly/cNOgPz .)

2. I is for Implementation

A great communicator himself, Franklin would have been undaunted by all the new options, evaluating each carefully in order to “Never confuse motion with action.”   When it comes to content creation, Franklin’s remarkably timeless advice to, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing,” is as true for Twitter and YouTube in 2010 as it was for patriotic pamphlets back in 1775.  Anticipating the transparency that enlightened marketers now seek, his proverb “honesty is the best policy,” is truer today than ever before.

Franklin inherently understood social media implementation, and the critical roles of likability, entertainment and patience.  For brands that want to build fans on Facebook and the like, Franklin offered, “If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” For brands afraid of having a little fun with their audience, Franklin encouraged, “Games lubricate the body and the mind.” And for brands in an unrealistic hurry to gain traction in social media, Franklin noted, “He that can have patience can have what he will.”

3. M is for Monitoring

As Postmaster General in 1768, Franklin monitored the routes of British mail ships to discover why it took them two weeks longer to reach US ports than private merchant ships.   Conducting his own focus groups with merchant captains and whalers, Franklin ultimately charted and named the Gulf Stream, which was acting like a firewall, slowing the movement of data from East to West across the Atlantic.  Not new to the idea of monitoring, Franklin approached even minute details with earnest, noting, “A small leak will sink a great ship.”

So too must social media marketers monitor their activities with rigor and respond accordingly.  While lots of free tools are available to monitor everything from conversations to web traffic, organic search performance to lead generation, Franklin reminded us that, “Lost time is never found again,” thus the anticipating the use of time-saving paid services like Radian6.  With such a disciplined approach to social media, marketers can, in Franklin’s words, “Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”

Even 220 years after his death, Benjamin Franklin remains a beloved character bestowing a treasure trove of wisdom for good citizens and good brands.  In fact, among the 12 virtues that he drafted when only 20 years old, you will find the single best guidance for any brand I’ve ever read, “Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”  (This article originally appeared on MediaPost.com)

How Kinaxis, a Supply Chain Management Solutions Provider based in Ottawa, Is Achieving Extraordinary Results via Social Media Marketing

Just after the Marketing VP set the bar at 20,000 downloads in the first six months, Petra Neiger and the myPlanNet game team at Cisco wondered, “How the heck are we going to do that?” The marketing budget was well under $50,000, her team was tiny and each of them had other marketing responsibilities. Nonetheless, when I met Petra this May, the program was already a stunning success and being honored with BtoB’s Social Media Marketing Award for Best Integrated Campaign.

In fact, myPlanNet, a simulation game that “puts you in the shoes of a service provider CEO,” exceeded expectations at every turn. Launched in October 2009, the game surpassed the download goal by 3,200 the end of January and has gained at least 20,000 more players since then. The game has attracted over 60,000 fans on Facebook with players from at least 2500 different companies and over 130 different countries. With 5,000 new fans joining between mid May and mid June, myPlanNet is a case worth studying, revealing six game-changing steps to social media innovation.

1. Get Management Blessing

It’s a fundamental truth that innovation requires support in the highest offices of any company. Not surprisingly, the myPlanNet game concept was “formed out of an internal innovation contest,” noted Ms.Neiger. “The idea was to find an untraditional way to engage our customer and teach them about Cisco,” she added. “Cisco is very big on innovation, wanting to show the human network in action,” offered Petra. That said, management did not write a blank check and instead put a cap on financial resources, limiting the development budget to $200,000 thus requiring the team to make the most of every dollar. This hedging approach to innovation is not unusual and can inspire further creativity as it did with this program.

2. Channel Internal Energy

Often companies overlook the importance of encouraging widespread employee involvement in their innovative initiatives, particularly in social media. This was not the case with myPlanNet. First, noted Ms. Neiger, “we had an internal group that tested the game every step of the way.” This helped keep the program on budget. Then, added Ms. Neiger, “We launched the game internally 2-3 weeks before external launch because it’s a very robust game so we didn’t know how it would work once a lot of people started playing.” This had the added benefits of enhancing morale and as Petra noted, “started a trend inside the company where other groups are starting to play the game and are inspired to try more innovative approaches.”

3. Create Something Innovative

Admittedly, this sub-head may seem a little obvious, but the key word here is “Create” and you’d be amazed how often marketers seek social media success without actually creating something of genuine value for their target. In Cisco’s case, they created a simulation game that according to Petra, was “easy to play but difficult to master; you can play five minutes or you can play for an hour.” One sure sign of success that you’ve created something innovative is unplanned press attention. “We had no PR outreach whatsoever,” added Ms.Neiger, yet the Washington Post, The SF Chronicle, numerous magazines and blogs all reported on the game, which in turn fueled social media engagement.

4. Seed Your Efforts

Bestselling author Doug Ruskoff recently suggested that all a company needed to do was to create a superior product and, in the new world of social media communications, consumers would find out about it and beat a virtual trail to their door. This idealistic viewpoint may ultimately prove to be true but few marketers can or should take this chance right now. At a minimum, marketers need to jump-start the conversation, as was the case with myPlanNet. The game demoed at a big tradeshow in Geneva last October where, noted Ms. Neiger, “We had a camera to record people’s experiences and put these videos and images on our Game Support and Facebook fan pages.” Judiciously allocating their $30k launch budget to demos, welcome ads and content syndication, Cisco also spent $100 per day on Facebook to bring people to their fan page all of which helped spark interest in the game.

5. Keep on Experimenting

Given the dynamic nature of social media, it is essential that once you get started you keep adapting to consumer feedback and experiment as the opportunities present themselves. Noted Ms. Neiger, “six weeks after launch we started doing social media even more and experimenting a lot.” When they started seeing comments in foreign languages, they responded with a monthly report of fans by country. “People have national pride and are very into it so they passed along the link,” offered Petra who noted enthusiastically that users could be traced back to 130 different countries, thus fulfilling an important objective for this unique marketing initiative. Later on they added a holiday challenge, mini-online games and even a multiple choice quiz about the game, all of which increased fan engagement.

6. Think Small

Unfortunately, a lot of innovative programs, especially ambitious ones in the social media arena never see the light of day because their initial funding requirements are deemed to be too large by management. myPlanNet, the game, was built in 13 months with the help of external experts at a budget cap of $200,000. Though previous gaming efforts by Cisco had achieved some success, management still asked, “Why would this be different from what we’ve done before and how do we get the word out?” Petra and her team were quick with answers, having baked in a more “inclusive gaming experience” and social media-friendly elements like in-game testimonials and a dynamic leader board that allows players to see top scores by week, month and all-time. At the same time, Petra noted that “We would have loved to do more personalization within the game and to include a multiplayer aspect,” but that would have required more time and money, changes that might have prevented this winning game from launching in the first place.

Final note: Petra was quick to remind me that myPlanNet, “started as a side project.” Since then, she added, “The company realizes that the game is really good and really successful,” but she “still has a day job” as does the rest of her team–so much for award-winning marketing being all fun and games!

How Shelly Palmer is fast becoming the Martha Stewart of Digital Life

Catherine and her team at the world’s largest spirits company set the bar high, aspiring to “own cocktails” and to “preempt the competition” in order to gain share. When the program rolled out in the latter part of 2008, it soon achieved all its goals providing a “top-shelf” example of the power of Marketing as Service.

Just in case you missed it, this article ran on MediaPost today.

A seasoned marketing veteran said to me recently that social media is simply “what we used to call buzz marketing.”  I bristled at this and mentioned that Donny Deutsch had also tried to categorize social media at the recent NYC I40 Character conference as “just another new & sexy media channel” like cable TV 20 years ago or the Internet 10 years ago.   In my humble opinion, to look at social media through the lens of a previous communication channel is an old-school approach that is inherently self-limiting.

Instead, I would encourage marketers to graduate to Social Media 3.0, an entirely new dynamic that requires a high degree professionalism, new strategic platforms, new metrics for success, new monitoring tools, cross-disciplined planning and an open-mindedness to social media in just about any business category.  To that end, here are four courses of action marketers should consider to really make the grade in social media.

Enough with the Interns

Because a lot of marketers consider social media experimental and/or the exclusive domain of Millennials, they fail to staff this relatively young field with experienced professionals.  The result is a self-fulfilling mishmash of tactics that rarely yield sustainable results.  Because social media can have an impact on everything from search results to PR coverage, lead generation to customer loyalty, marketers need to acknowledge its critical role and staff it accordingly.

Just a couple of weeks ago I met with a publisher of a major print mag that was way behind its publishing peers in social media.  When I asked how he planned to attack this challenge, his response was, “We just hired a summer intern to outline our social media strategy.”  Are you kidding me?  I couldn’t help but wonder if this same publisher would put interns on the phone with his most important customers or ask an intern to figure out his long-term business plan. No wonder print is in trouble.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love interns.  Just don’t put them in charge of anything customer facing – especially social media. Take this stuff seriously folks. Hire professionals, or your competition will eat you for lunch.

Align with Business Goals

Social Media 2.0 was mainly “ready, fire, aim.” Marketers set up Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube videos and blogs  when the spirit arose, all in the name of experimentation.  Some succeeded but more ended up with a disparate array of content that languished, raising serious questions in the C-Suite about the ROI of social media.

Social Media 3.0 is about aligning your efforts clearly and directly with your company’s principal objectives of increasing revenue and/or lowering costs.   If the emphasis is on the revenue side, then you can further break this down into customer acquisition and/or revenue per customer.  A number of companies like Dell and e.l.f. cosmetics are using social media to drive revenue, pushing out offers to their networks of fans that translate into immediate sales and repeat purchases.

If the emphasis is on cost reduction, then consider how social media can lower call center costs and/or cost per lead.  Best Buy’s Twelpforce has responded to 28,000 customer inquiries via Twitter, dramatically lowering cost per response vis-à-vis its call center.  A well-designed social media program can radically improve natural search results, which in turn will lower your cost per lead.

Get Serious about Metrics

Once your business goals are clear, establishing KPIs (key performance indices) and related social media benchmarks is a relatively simple task regardless of your business category.  To that point, one of the most interesting social media cases I’ve seen lately was about a Canadian supply chain management company named Kinaxis, a company that is so serious about metrics for success that they hired Forrester to guide their strategy while making the business case for social media.

In 2008, Kinaxis set out to engage the greater supply chain community with the hopes of increasing website traffic, driving sales leads, generating positive word of mouth all with the underlying goal of improving natural search results.  Using a multi-pronged online approach that included blogging, community building, video distribution and Twitter, Kinaxis was able to build and sustain an active community and triple their number of web-based sales leads to 42,000 in 2009.

Though I can’t do justice to the Kinaxis case here, suffice it to say that they monitored a wide range of metrics including page views, impressions, referrals, email open-rates, conversion rates, word of mouth mentions, and more, all of which went up dramatically due to a well planned and executed program of engagement.

Conduct a Social Media Audit

As I stated at the beginning of this diatribe, social media is far more complex than a traditional media channel in which a marketer can simply buy some time and push out a message.  Social media touches just about every aspect of your business from customer service to corporate compliance, lead generation to public relations, advertising to corporate social responsibility and then some.

As such, marketers would be smart to conduct a thorough social media audit internally or better yet with the help of outside experts who can take an impartial look at both the issues and the opportunities.  This audit requires the attention and participation of multiple department heads, since a well-conceived and well-executed program is inherently cross-disciplined, and turf wars must be avoided.

A thorough social media audit (see Renegade Social Media Audit slideshow here) examines the competitive environment, defines an overall strategy in the context of business goals, outlines tactical opportunities and identifies any organizational and cultural changes required to support implementation.  This highly disciplined approach will save countless hours of wheel spinning, helping to insure that your investment will be rewarded and you’ll be graduating to the next level of social media success.

So instead of just toasting Dads and grads on Facebook this June, give some serious thought to how your social media program can graduate to a new level of professionalism and accomplishment.

Two days after resigning from his position as Chief Marketing Officer, Jeffrey Hayzlett was still saying “we” when referring to Kodak, a habit I suspect will take some time to break. Speaking with understandable pride after four years of remarkable accomplishments, Jeff answered my questions with an authority that at first left me baffled. Then it hit me. This is not your typical marketing maven. Jeff Hayzlett actually puts the Chief in Chief Marketing Officer.

Instead of talking about ad campaigns, we talked about products and value propositions. Instead of talking ideas, we discussed what a marketing chief needs to do to succeed in a rapidly changing media landscape. Its not that Jeff doesn’t care about ideas, its just that he knows those are by products of performing the CMO job as a true leader, a practice that I have broken down into seven bite-sized morsels for your immediate consumption.

1. Align Goals

Making sure your marketing goals align with the goals of the company seems like a fairly basic place to start but it is amazing how many senior marketers forget this important first step. “A lot of CMOs fail because they forget to get conditions of satisfaction,” offered Hayzlett, who spends a lot of time setting the goals and won’t move forward until he knows what will make his customer (in this case, his boss) happy. Jeff acknowledges that “a lot of CMO’s aren’t even in the C-suite,” which can make nailing down the goals quite a bit tougher.

2. Create Tension

Once your marching orders are clear, Jeff believes the next priority of the CMO is “to create tension in order to encourage more innovative activity.” When reviewing the launch of a new video camera, Jeff created tension “by asking questions no one thought to ask before,” even going so far as to publicly ridicule an alphanumeric product name. “That made some of my people cringe,” acknowledged Hayzlett, whose questions led to a public search for a new name that generated millions of free PR impressions, thousands of entries and one winning name—PlaySport.

3. Act Fast

As we jumped from topic to topic, it was clear to me that Jeff is nothing if not a man of action, and his biggest lament, “wasting time on things that didn’t materialize.” In a period of four years, he was able to launch several successful new products in both B2C and B2B segments, all of which were able to achieve 1st, 2nd or 3rd positions in their respective categories. Jeff noted with glee that 60% of Kodak’s revenue now comes from products that didn’t exist when he started there. When talking about the launch of the naming promotion for Play Sport, Jeff sounded more like the head of racing pit crew, having jumped from concept to execution in two weeks flat!

4. Stretch Budget

It is no secret that Jeff is a huge fan of social media noting that, “It’s a great way to launch a new product and gave us an extreme amount of credibility in the video camera category.” Targeting “every blogger and thought leader,” Hayzlett and his team were able to make Play Sport a strong alternative to category leader Flip without spending a dime on traditional media. As he points out in his new book, The Mirror Test, Hayzlett sees social media as an extraordinary way to connect with consumers and stretch a budget under an umbrella notion he celebrates as OPM, or “Other People’s Money.” Given the low costs, even the smallest businesses can see very tangible returns from social media,” offers Hayzlett.

5. Breakdown Silos

Recalling the extraordinary success that Kodak has had in the ink jet category, Jeff zeros in on how Kodak changed the value proposition in the category, offering reasonably priced ink cartridges to go along with a reasonably priced printer. “When the printing of a recipe is more expensive that the actual ingredients, the consumer knows there is a problem,” noted Hayzlett. Because marketing had a “seat at the table” and participated in the product development process, Hayzlett was able ensure that a strong value proposition was baked into the product, offering a point of difference that made marketing a far simpler task. With the silos broken down, Kodak ink jet printers, according to Hayzlett, “achieved #1 share in some countries.”

6. Take Risks

“No one is going to die in marketing,” offered Hayzlett when discussing the justification for taking risks like playing a video featuring a gray-haired spokesman shouting “booyah” about how Kodak was changing. He went on to note that, “if you want to grow, you’re going to have to take risks. It’s not that Hayzlett is out to offend but as he cautions, “sometimes you don’t know ‘til you try it.” He prescribes “doing it in such a way to minimize the backlash,” and if things don’t work as planned, “its okay to say we screwed up.” Jeff recalls with bravado that his group was fined $500 for not filing a promotional contest in time, a calculated risk that ended up saving his team irreplaceable weeks in program development time.

7. Listen Up

After talking for a good bit, Hayzlett circled back to the importance of listening to the consumer and being “completely transparent.” During his tenure at Kodak, he brought “voice of the customer” to the forefront establishing the position of Chief Listening Officer “to bring scale” to all of Kodak’s social media activities. With a CLO in place, Hayzlett ensured that complaints were heard, questions were answered, comments were responded to and even more PR was generated. “When a consumer tweets ‘they are thinking about buying,’ then we listen and point them in the right direction,” added Hayzlett, whose innovative and authoritative approach to the CMO position at Kodak leaves some pretty big shoes to fill.

Final Note: During his tenure at Kodak, Hayzlett established himself as one of the first “celebrity CMOs,”gaining notoriety on Celebrity Apprentice and extending it with a well publicized book tour. With an army-sized following on Twitter, and a well-established presence in every form of media, I have no doubt we’ll be hearing a lot more from Jeff in the near future.

“It’s marketing that isn’t marketing,” said John Bernier, the social media maven at Best Buy whose dev team brought the stunningly effective Twelpforce to market in July of 2009. Since then Twelpforce has responded to near 28,000 customer inquiries via Twitter, enlisted 2600 employees to share their knowledge, and paid for itself many times over via extensive PR coverage, enhanced brand perceptions, and potential savings to the call center.

Setting a new standard for Marketing as Service, Twelpforce is worth studying, both for its lightning quick development process and for the surprise benefits of this highly innovative program. While this article is based on two extensive interviews with Mr. Bernier, one at the New York 140 Characters Conference and the other by phone last week, he is quick to note that this was “clearly a team effort” that went well beyond the marketing department. In fact, it is the cross-disciplined nature of this effort that makes the following 7 insights all the more instructive.

1. Recognize the Need

Most marketers know to look for an unmet needs but few find them, especially in the chaos that was Twitter in 2008. “We saw widespread use of Twitter among employees,” noted Bernier, “and our customers were talking about us on Twitter.” Putting two and two together, the Best Buy development project team created spy.appspot.com to monitor the conversation online and to formulate an engagement plan. This was a critical first step on the road to meeting “a need in a time and place when customers were asking for it,” as Mr. Bernier so aptly put it.

2. Follow the Leader

At about this time, Barry Judge, CMO of BestBuy was emerging as a major voice on Twitter. “Our leadership started to get very visible with customers, and that set the tone for the rest of the department,” noted Bernier. “Barry was the catalyst, giving us the green light to go experiment, so we had the luxury of leadership buy-in,” Bernier gratefully added. All that said, Barry Judge alone couldn’t answer all the customer questions himself, and it quickly became clear that they needed to find a way to tap into the tech expertise across the organization.

3. Build it Fast

Around April 2009, Bernier’s team was told that Twelpforce was a go and would even be featured in a TV spot in July. They essentially had two months to build a system that could monitor customer inquiries on Twitter and allow multiple employees to respond from one account. The risks were huge and “not a day went by that I didn’t think this might not work,” sighed Bernier. Nonetheless, using open source software and “the cloud,” they were ready for a “soft launch” in June by which time 600 eager employees had already volunteered to test the system.

4. Unleash your Employees

Unlike traditional customer support services, employee access to Twelpforce was not restricted to a select group of highly trained agents. In fact, the genius of Twelpforce is that it tapped into an existing talent pool that welcomed the chance to share their knowledge in their spare time! “A geek squad guy might have a break between sessions or it could be a ‘Blue Shirt’ in-store at a slow moment, either way,” noted Bernier, “this talent was ready, willing and able to help out. Because the system was designed to tie each response to an individual employee, each Twelpforce rep could feel a personal sense of pride in their participation.”

5. Expect the Unexpected

After the initial 600 Twelpforce testers, an additional 2000 signed on, and while not all are active, those that are have found some extraordinary side benefits. First, it helped create a new internal network, “broadening their relationship with other employees who shared a common interest,” beamed Bernier. Second, it served as on-going training program as Twelpforce reps researched questions and read the range of answers. Because it became clear that some questions couldn’t be answered in 140 characters, the development project team also went to work on a tool that enabled longer, more sophisticated answers.

6. Support the Big Picture

Though it could have been a big risk to feature Twelpforce before its merits were established, BestBuy took the chance with good reason. Seeking the well wishes of early adopters and tech influencers, you can’t simply talk the talk. You have to walk the walk, demonstrating your passion for technology and leading edge know-how by applying innovations like Twitter, innovations favored by the technorati. Being able to translate this passion into better, faster service as BestBuy did with Twelpforce is an even bigger coup since this is clearly a weak spot for discount-driven competitors like Wal-Mart, who are far less in tune with the latest innovations.

7. Reap the Rewards

While on the surface, Twelpforce could be perceived as a short-term marketing ploy, it is in truth more like a vein of gold that has just barely been tapped. Twelpforce offers “real time pulse measurement” noted Bernier, “so we could use the feed to adjust banner ad copy”, to reflect trending topics like iPad accessories, new game releases or localized out-of-stocks. In order to help Best Buy “Examine the past to predict the future,” Bernier and the dev team are currently creating an even more robust monitoring system, once again in a highly transparent manner and which you can see in its infancy at bbyfeed.com. As Bernier puts it, “The evolution of Twelpforce involves the story of data.”

Final note: Customer satisfaction among users of Twelpforce is actually higher than c-sat ratings of Best Buy among the general population. These higher ratings translate into increased purchase intent as well as the likelihood to spend more per purchase. Not bad for a program that was built in two months under the premise that “If we were going to fail, we wanted to fail fast.”

The argument raged until 2am when the guy stormed out. The guy, an MBA student at UNC insisted that “games are for kids and IBM isn’t going to buy it,” while the demure Phaedra Boinodiris, also a first year MBA candidate, stuck to her guns, knowing the case challenge posted by IBM “screamed for a business SIM.”  Just a few hours later, Sandy Carter of IBM was asking Phaedra to build a prototype of her idea, an idea that became Innov8, a highly successful “serious game” that explains business process management to non-technical people and is my new favorite example of Marketing as Service.

In retrospect, it wasn’t really a fair fight. Phaedra was not your typical MBA student with ten years of entrepreneurial experience under her belt, having founded two companies including WomenGamers.com, now a popular portal for female gamers.  Thus, her expertise on the gaming world was substantial and while Sandy Carter’s request would have tripped up most students, Phaedra was up to the challenge.  In my interview with Phaedra at Impact 2010, IBM Software’s annual conference, her experience with IBM over the last two years provides a gripping playbook for innovators, especially “intrapreneurs” seeking to build “start ups” within large companies.

1.     Pursue your Passions

Phaedra got into the gaming business back in 1999 because she was a gamer, her sister was a gamer but not one of the industry publications addressed the category from a female perspective.  Knowing that 35% of women play video and computer games, she leapt into the void by setting up WomenGamers.com. She became an activist for the cause, starting the first scholarship program for women to get degrees in game design and development in the US, helping to share her passion with others.  After two years full-time with IBM, her passion for the power of games remains strong, adding that, “through self-discovery and experience consumers can better understand what you’re selling.”

2.    Find a Champion

When Sandy Carter first approached her at the Case Competition, Phaedra wasn’t sure what to make of her prototype request.  Now she knows that Sandy is the kind of internal champion that every “intrapreneur” dreams about finding.  “What amazed me is that Sandy attends the Case Competition’s herself instead of delegating this to a junior person,” marveled Phaedra.  “That takes real cajones and reflects Sandy’s commitment to find innovative ideas,” added Phaedra.  After the Case Competition, Sandy offered Phaedra an internship that lasted the rest of her time at business school and led the way to the now successful Serious Gaming group at IBM.

3.     Partner with Pros

Given only three months to build a prototype, Phaedra and her team at IBM knew they needed great partners and aligned with Centerline.”  “There are so many bad games out there,” noted Phaedra, “you really have to find a developer with a light touch,” to create an engaging experience.  In fact, Phaedra notes that of the three key ingredients of entrepreneurial success; people, process and ideas, people is by far the most important.  “A great idea without the right people will fail, whereas even an okay idea could succeed with great people,” she added.   Phaedra’s confidence in Centerline was thoroughly justified as they turned the initial idea first into a prototype and later into a simulation game played now played at over 1000 colleges and business schools around the world.

4.     Start with the Low Hanging Fruit

Once Innov8 was produced, it was quickly adopted and lauded by teachers, students and the press.  USC’s Marshall School of Business soon required every student to play Innov8.  Phaedra noted with understandable pride, “One class at a Turkish University uses Innov8 for its final exam!”  Teachers thanked Phaedra because “BPM is not an easy thing to teach.”  “We took something that was highly technical and made it more intuitive,” added Phaedra.  “Students were the low hanging fruit but they also represented future business opportunity,” which would eventually help to get Business Process Management software adopted by more and more companies.

5.     Build from Success

Once Innov8 had gained traction with graduate schools, Phaedra got approval to develop a flash-based online version of the game that could reach and engage a wider audience.  Adding social networking elements like a leader board, the online version soon became a lead machine.  Currently thossands of potential and current customers play Innov8 2.0 Online per month generating thousands of leads, many of which have been converted into sales.  In fact, Innov8 online generates many times more leads for IBM’s BPM software than any other source, creating an ROI that even “VCs would love.” “We took baby steps, building our case internally, showing ROI of each subsequent project, just like we would have to external investors,” offered Ms. Boinodiris.

6.     Don’t Sell Chocolate Broccoli

One of the happy by-products of the online Innov8 game was that it introduced the idea of serious gaming to a broader audience.  Soon IBM’s business partners were asking if they could customize Innov8 for their customers.  And eventually a new group within IBM Global Business Services was set up to do just that!  This speaks to the power of selling by educating as well as the quality of the game itself.  As Phaedra opined, “people can smell chocolate broccoli from a mile away,” so even educational games have to be extremely well crafted.  This insight is a truth for all such marketing as service programs, if the experience isn’t top notch, the customer or prospect simply won’t engage.  On the other hand, if the experience is rich and educational, there is simply no better way to sell.

7.     Revel in the Naysayers

Since her late night argument with a fellow MBA, Phaedra has reveled in the challenge of selling games as a serious business tool and formidable marketing weapon.  Some have resisted the idea, calling games “fluff” and “kids stuff.”  When I asked her about sales force adoption, she noted that there has been some resistance there too. “Sales has their lucky underwear and don’t like to change it,” she winked. Fortunately, her continued emphasis on proving ROI internally has been rewarded with the green lighting of a next gen simulation game called CityOne that will launch Fall 2010.  CityOne is already being lauded by the press, with Gizmodo saying “if SimCity introduced legions of gamers to the world of urban planning, then IBM’s upcoming CityOne game looks to take that education to the next level.”

Final note: I consider myself lucky to have met Phaedra.  As proud as she is of her accomplishments thus far, she remains humble.  She states with realistic clarity that “games won’t displace anything; they will supplement other sales tool, driving people down the purchase funnel.”  My guess—the potential for games as educational sales tools for highly technical products is truly unlimited and Phaedra will remain on the forefront for quite some time.

April was a remarkable month with both Facebook and Apple making game changing introductions while gatherings of characters, developers and CMO’s provided glimpses into the goodness ahead.

1. Learn to Love the Like Button

Make no mistake about it; the Like button from Facebook is a stroke of genius for them and most likely for the online publishing world.  Just in case you missed this momentous land grab, on April 21^st Facebook made its Like button available to all publishers and in the blink of an eye changed how content is shared on the internet. Over 50,000 sites jumped at the opportunity because it is a smart and easy thing to do–so easy that even I could add it to this blog in a matter of minutes.  Facebook is expecting a billion Like buttons to sprout shortly and I’m hard to pressed to think of a site that wouldn’t benefit from this simply yet powerful means of encouraging content sharing.

2. Keep Your Eyes on the iPad

I was at party for iPad developers a few weeks ago and it felt like the late ‘90s again. The party was sponsored by the HR department of Barnes & Noble, who was there trolling for developers – no doubt looking for ways to leverage this new media channel.   The energy and excitement over this new platform is akin to the early days of the Internet.  Simply whip out an iPad and people will flock to you like moths to a flame. A friend of mine recently used an iPad during a sales call and got an hour of quality time with a previously recalcitrant prospect.  Even when the novelty wears off, assuming that happens in the next 12 months, the uses of this device go well beyond gaming as the true business applications are just beginning to be explored.  Sure other “tablets” that promised a B2B revolution have been released before, but none have had the dazzling elegance and enthralling simplicity that Apple brings to the iPad.

3. Tap into the Goodness of Tweeters

Among the many things I gained from the 140 Characters conference in New York last month was a profound sense of hope.  For those of you not aligned with the Twitterverse, the 140 Characters conference assembles 140 interesting people on stage and another 1000+ in the audience to share the good, the bad and the ugly of all things Twitter.  With no PowerPoint crutches, many speakers bared their souls, enlightening us about the good deeds enabled by Twitter, from raising money for Haiti to putting prayers into the Western Wall.  Celebrity tweeters like Anne Curry and Ivanka Trump engaged with the hoi polloi in a remarkably open manner reflecting their belief that “people are inherently good.”  Maybe it’s the “retweet” function that attracts good people to Twitter, but regardless there’s a very strong Pay It Forward substrate embedded into this particular social medium.

4. Follow Twelpforce into Customer Service

As most of the marketing world is contemplating how social media fits into customer service, BestBuy is out there doing it and doing it well via TwelpForce (and I’m not just saying that because I won an iPad courtesy of BestBuy at the 140 Conference!).  Set up over a year ago, Twelpforce is “a collective force of Best Buy technology pros offering tech advice in Tweet form.”  Enter a question on Twitter about technology referencing BestBuy or Twelpforce and you’ll get a well-conceived response in short order.  They even set up their own monitoring/response tool that allows the hundreds of BestBuy employees that make up Twelpforce to respond with answers longer than 140 characters.  It is no wonder that over 25,000 twitterers are following Twelpforce.  If your company hasn’t integrated social media into customer service yet, Twelpforce offers a pretty darn good road map.

5. Channel your Chutzpah

I’ve spent a lot of time with marketers lately, interviewing them for articles and at conferences like The CMO Club Leadership Summit.  Marketers come from all walks of life, many starting in disciplines other than marketing, and the range of approaches to their positions is startling diverse.  Some are heavily analytic, others more prone to shoot from the hip.  That said the one thing that the most successful ones have in common is chutzpah.  They simply aren’t afraid to bend the rules or challenge convention or beg forgiveness in order to get an innovative program out in the market.  When the CEO of Kodak asked his CMO, Jeff Hayzlett, about the ROI of a Kodak social media initiative, Jeff’s response was, “I’ll answer you if you can tell me what’s the Return on Ignoring our customers.”  Now that’s chutzpah!  What Jeff is doing with the Kodak brand is a veritable album of innovation.

Hopefully, the shower of stimuli I absorbed in April will help your ideas bloom in May.

Sunnie is the “little tugboat that could” helping to transform a regional life insurance company into a global brand.

An online friend and I use ”friend” loosely since I have no idea who she really is other than a helpful sharer, sent me this link.  She knows that I am always on the hunt for interesting examples of Marketing as Service and true to form, this one qualified.  Carte Noire, a brand of coffee sold in the UK by Kraft, has assembled a hunky cadre of actors who read delicious bits of novels on camera under the promise “For a more seductive coffee break.”

The readings are quite well done and they leave you thirsty for more.  I’ve now watched actor Joseph Fiennes read a few pages from Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, and Greg Wise liven up Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray.   Other readers include Dominic West and Dan Stevens. All told, there are 37 of these luscious treats waiting for you on the website.  Clearly Kraft has gone to a lot of trouble to make this online effort pleasing, offering free samples of their coffee and a sweepstakes for the “spa” inclined.  And partner Penguin Books is just a link away, ready to sell you the complete novels sampled on the site.

As an example of Marketing as Service, this one is reasonably fresh.  The sales pitch is gentle, as long as it doesn’t bother you that the reader is holding a cup of coffee much of the time or is sitting so close to a mug that he risks scalding himself on the steam.  In truth, the product information is so scant, that about all I could learn about Carte Noire is that it’s made from a “100% Arabica bean blend.”  And don’t ask me what “Arabica” is because I’m too busy watching my next chapter.

After a bit of sleuthing, I did find at two offline extensions of this idea.  At some point last year, Carte Noire hosted a major sampling event at which fresh coffee was served, stories were read, and everyone left with a bookmark that had a sample of the freeze-dried product attached.  It looked like a rich experience from the video, but I can’t tell if this was a “one-off” or an ongoing program.  There was also a blog post about  some Carte Noire sponsored readings at The Cheltenham Literature Festival.

What I didn’t find was much in the way of social media or grass roots activities. Perhaps they are going on in England as I write, but I couldn’t find a word about them online.  So let me take a coffee break of my own and imagine how they could brew up a truly special 360° campaign at just about any budget level.  Hopefully, if I’ve got the wrong flavor here, the kind folks at Kraft UK will set me straight.

Again in full ignorance I ask, why isn’t Carte Noire sponsoring “seductive book clubs” all over England?  Take a look at what e.l.f. did with their “make-up parties” and you’ll see an easy formula for grass roots efforts that could certainly connect the brand with their target.  Provide a pot full of product, gift certificates from Penguin and reader notes prepared by a worthy scholar and you’ve got the recipe for trial-generating, loyalty-building revelry. Then imagine if Joseph Fiennes showed up unannounced at one of these parties to read for a bit.  Surely that would be a piping hot story for the local press.

Carte Noire also seems to be going light on the social media front.  Sure they have links to FB, Twitter, digg and delicious at the bottom of each page but why not share more of this beautifully produced readings on YouTube and Facebook?  Your fans are far more likely to spend time with you on social media that on your website.  I did find that some of the actors are sharing their Carte Noire readings via podcasts, which is a nice touch, but again, I really had to dig to find these.  How about becoming a major advocate of “seductive book clubs” on Twitter, following your target and sharing your unique POV on having a “seductive coffee break?”

Of course, I may be all wet here.  Carte Noire is marketed across the pond and for all I know, this campaign is more than a coffee break, and instead is a full course meal of integrated marketing applying the latest techniques in guerrilla and social media.   If so, roast away Kraft UK.  I promise not to be bitter.

Business Insider ran a feature today on guerrilla marketing which included a couple of quotes from yours truly.  Here are my notes from my interview with reporter Bianca Male.

What is the best way to define guerrilla marketing? And what is it most definitely not?

Guerrilla marketing is a state of mind not a particular channel. Guerrilla marketing is about making more out of less, combining innovation and elbow grease to cut through. Guerrilla marketing can also be defined by what it isn’t. It isn’t traditional media like TV and print. Today’s guerrilla marketers capitalize on social media with a vengeance; listening, researching, conversing, engaging, supporting and ultimately selling. That said, just using social media channels like Facebook doesn’t make you a guerrilla. Using Facebook in a fresh way like Burger King did with Whopper Sacrafice is guerrilla. It simply isn’t guerrilla if it isn’t newsworthy.

How can a business decide if a guerilla marketing campaign is right for them?

There are a few highly regulated industries like financial services and insurance that make considering guerrilla approaches a risky proposition. That said, just about every other marketer big or small can benefit from guerrilla, its just a question of risk tolerance. Guerrilla marketing typically carries some risk since it requires a brand to step outside its comfort zone and do something they’ve never done before. Guerrilla marketing done right is newsworthy. As I said earlier, It isn’t guerrilla marketing if it isn’t newsworthy. One of the risks of guerrilla marketing is that it simply won’t cut through as planned simply because it wasn’t original or it was just a dumb idea. Another risk is that the guerrilla idea was a mere moment in time and didn’t include sustaining elements. One of my favorites: Renegade launched the HSBC BankCab in 2003 with a search for the “most knowledgeable cabbie in New York” which got tons of PR and concluded with a one-year contract for Johnnie Morello. Seven years later Johnnie is still on the road providing free rides to delighted HSBC customers in a vintage 1982 Checker Cab.

How does a business develop a guerrilla campaign? Any guidelines?

The article I just wrote for my blog on Fast Company provides several relevant guidelines. Generally, its best to start by setting clear objectives followed quickly by doing your homework, really thinking through your category, brand and consumer. Ideally, this process will yield a true insight that can be transformed into a big idea. Then its time to think 360°, imagining all the ways your idea can come to life, online, offline and in-between. It often helps at this point to imagine the story headline you’d like to see, the tweets you’d like to read, the photos you’d like to be taken and YouTube videos that you’d want to view. Talk to some PR professionals you trust to make sure these story ideas might in fact find purchase in your ideal media outlets. Google your idea to make sure it hasn’t been done the same way you’re planning to do it. Guerrilla programs usually start when a client says to us, “we don’t have any money but we’d really like to get some media attention.”

One of my favorites: A few years ago, Panasonic was introducing a new line of alkaline batteries called Oxyride that were far more powerful than Energizer. Since they didn’t have the budget to compete directly, Renegade came up with a truly guerrilla program called “Neuter your Bunny.” This tongue-in-cheek “public service” effort focused on heightening awareness of the benefits of bunny neutering. Turns out it calms the male bunnies down and prevents female bunnies from getting cervical cancer, a disease that otherwise strikes them with remarkably frequency. So Panasonic Oxyride batteries established Neuter Your Bunny day, donating 5 free neuterings and $10,000 to the House Rabbit Society. And despite the fact that PETA gave Panasonic an award for caring, the American press thought this was veiled yet hilarious competitive campaign writing headlines like “Panasonic Wants to Neuter Energizer” in over 30 publications from Time Magazine to Newsday.

Is there anything a business should NEVER do when it comes to guerrilla marketing?

It is generally not a good idea to do something that will cause someone on the team to go to jail. If you have to break the law to get attention then you probably need a different business model. Try not to annoy your target. A street team performer once shoved a donut in my face in order to get me to stop and go into a bank branch—this was not a fun experience for me or productive for the bank who would never ever get my business after that. Try not to think of guerrilla as a moment in time or as a simple street stunt. This will limit your horizons and the potential impact. And never tell the boss that your guerrilla program is going to be a hit before it becomes one. Its always better to under-promise and over-deliver especially with often unpredictable guerrilla endeavors.

… in just under two years Ted was able to help e.l.f. cosmetics significantly increase its sales in one of the worst recessions in history, providing a textbook case for any aspiring guerrilla marketer.

Detailed case history of MyRetirementShop.com, a retirement portal AXA created to help retain customers which also attracted new ones.

Breakdown of free tracking tools for the Ide(a)s of March.

How two leading insurance companies use Net Promoter to monitor customer satisfaction and encourage customer retention across their organization.

Here are five thought starters for guerrilla marketers in 2010.

These days, it’s simply not enough to manufacture a good product. Those are the table stakes. If you make an inferior product, no amount of marketing can save you from the painful truth that will spread faster than you can say, “tweet tweet.” That said, in categories with several high-quality options the winners like Lexus, American Express and Apple are succeeding by manufacturing love, gaining share of heart not just share of mind.It’s probably not news to anyone that Lexus makes a high quality product. In fact, Consumer Reports consistently rates Lexus best of breed in just about every segment. What you may not know is how far it will go to satisfy its customers, even its used — excuse me — “pre-owned” vehicle customers. Ready to retire my trusty Civic at the end of last year, I found out first hand why Lexus has topped a University of Michigan study on customer satisfaction four years in a row.

Meet Keith. Keith mans the pre-owned section at Lexus of Manhattan and is my new best friend. Keith offered my wife and me beverages, comfy chairs and a complete explanation of our options when we first met. After identifying OUR car, we haggled over the price ever so pleasantly and then did a final inspection at which point we discovered deal-breaking scratches on the passenger door. Expecting a “take it or leave it” response, Keith surprised us with a “of course, we’ll take care of this” and scheduled the repair work. Evidently, this is par for the course at Lexus.

When I picked up the car a week later, Keith surprised me again by explaining how everything in the car worked and noting the additional repainting they’d done “just because.” Keep in mind, we’re talking about a used car lease here so I’m thinking that’s the end of the road. Wrong again. A couple of days later I received a “how’s the car running?” check-in call from Keith. Several weeks after that he phoned to say that we needed to schedule an inspection and when I couldn’t find the time, he offered to retrieve the car, take care of the inspection and return it in short order. He did all that, threw in a car wash and, in the process, became the poster boy for love-generating customer service!

Lexus is not the only brand out there manufacturing brand love. American Express has been after the hearts and wallets of small businesses for many years. Recently, its OPEN program has kicked into high gear, delivering invaluable content and networking opportunities via the OPEN Forum. Sure, lots of brands offer content online but as someone who pumps out a fair amount myself, I can assure you this is best of breed, including articles, videos and discussions.

I also witnessed the OPEN Forum in action as CES, at which live speakers attracted flocks of small businesses eager to fly higher. Even the sales people were helpful, explaining the benefits of OPEN and assisting in the registration process. The positive vibe in the American Express booth was palpable and every touch-point made me and my fellow small business peeps feel loved by this corporate giant.

Apple has been a beloved brand pretty much since its founding by making truly innovative products that were easier to use and prettier to look at than its main competitors. The iPod and the iPhone created entire economic ecosystems, reinventing their respective categories, transforming mere devices into holistic lifestyles. And most companies would stop there, thrilled to have unique goods on the shelf.

Apple did not. It created the Apple Store to control the entire brand experience and, about a year ago, added in-store concierges to further the romance. These orange-shirted wizards can do everything from fixing a broken key to directing a product search to ringing up your order and emailing the receipt all in a nanosecond. And these are just the tasks they did for me on my last visit, all of which assured my enduring love for all things Apple.

Lexus, American Express and Apple are all premium brands that deliver high-quality products AND exemplary service. In doing so, they set themselves apart not just within their respective categories but also in the marketing world as a whole. They make it their business to exceed expectations and, in doing so, have created legions of brand advocates ready to do their bidding. These brands are redefining the rules of CRM, manufacturing love at every touch point, gaining share of heart, mind and wallet in the process.

As Second City moved down to fourth in their failed bid to host the 2016 Olympics, President Obama elected to use a sports metaphor to soften the blow. Noted the First Chicagoan upon his return from Copenhagen, “You can play a great game and still not win.”

Looking ahead to 2010, marketers will be facing Olympic hurdles that will require steadfast agility just to stay in the game, much less to hit the finish line ahead of the competition. Here are 10 ideas, wrapped in Olympic glory that should deliver the gold.

1. Social Media: A Marathon, Not a Sprint
Hoping to become fast friends with their targets, a lot of brands rushed into Facebook and Twitter in the last 24 months without investing sufficient time or resources. In 2010, savvy marketers will increase their commitment to social media by first listening and then offering up a steady stream of engaging content that their fans actually want. This will be particularly true for B2B brands, only 38% of whom included social media in their 2008 marketing plans (vs. 71% for B2C brands). With one comScore study indicating that branded social media activities can have a multiplier effect on search results, there is even a quantifiable rationale for brands to up the social media ante in 2010.

2. Mash-Ups: Taking Inspiration from Biathlons
A few innovative marketers took a shot at mash-ups in 2009. E.P. Carrillo, a new cigar manufacturer, created a mesmerizing Twitter and Google Maps mash-up for its “coming soon” site that tracks cigar tweets from around the world. In 2010, these kinds of mash-ups will become smoking hot as marketers look to extend the value of their social media activities. Recognizing that tech-savvy consumers glide seamlessly between personal and business, online and offline, mobile and desktop, farsighted marketers will bring together formerly disparate elements into a cohesive and self-perpetuating social media experience.

3. App Happy: On Your Mark, Get Set, Go Crazy
Given the success a handful of marketers enjoyed with their “apps” in 2009, expect a blaze of new entries in 2010. iPhone apps that provide demonstrable utility like Kraft’s iFood Assistant recipe finder, Benjamin Moore’s color matcher and Zipcar’s GPS-based car finder will continue to gain traction. Expect more app’s that integrate with other social media like the Gap StyleMixer that allows you to mix and match clothes and share them with friends on Facebook. And don’t forget the non-iPhone universe. The steakhouse Maloney and Porcelli cooked up a humorous and somewhat deviant web-based app at Expense A Steak that extrudes faux expense reports with stunning verisimilitude.

4. Measure Up: Track Every Second
With more dollars earmarked for social media, marketers will undoubtedly use new tools to monitor the conversations that are happening with or without them. Radian6 and Scout Labs emerged in 2009 as two of the leading social media monitoring tools. MolsonCoors uses Radian6 to stay on top of all the banter about its major brands, allowing them to respond with remarkable speed to one of my blog posts about a Coors Light Twitter account that turned out to be unofficial. And while these tools are great, each requires a sizeable commitment by the marketer in time of staff, a commitment that can and does pay off. Just ask JetBlue who manages to enhance customer loyalty daily by responding to any and every customer Tweet within minutes, following 117,000 on Twitter, and in the process generating over 1.3 million followers.

5. POV Power: Don’t Just Talk the Talk
While lots of brands raced into social media in 2009, few established true connections with their targets. The reality is that consumers engage with brands that they like on a visceral level and that provide a distinct perspective on the world. Aflac’s Duck quacks up a gaggle of quirky content, including charitable requests that appeal to over 161,000 fans on Facebook and 3,000+ followers on Twitter. Meanwhile, Geico’s Gecko has been left in the social media dust due to its surprisingly dry (twitter.com/geico) and unresponsive (facebook.com/geico) online voice. Ironically, a brand by definition is a point-of-view that once clearly defined should guide all communications, social or otherwise.

6. Expose Yourself: Win the Crowd With Honesty
The emergence of several “tell all” consumer-created sites signals the arrival of a new era of honesty and transparency – especially for brands targeting those under 35. Sites like fmylife.com, textsfromlastnight.com and MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com reflect a generation willing to bare and share all without the least trepidation. Even the emergence of “Untag Mondays” speaks to the socially acceptable norm of posting embarrassing content that one might not want a parent or employer to see. Marketers that share this sense of honesty, that admit mistakes and address shortcomings in real-time will find a youthful army of comrades willing to do their bidding. As Comcast discovered, this kind of honesty can even transform a PR nightmare (comcastmustdie.com) into an industry-leading customer service (http://twitter.com/comcastcares.)

7. Hold the Presses: Major Comebacks are Possible
Though a 50% decline in ad pages certifies 2009 as the worst year in its history, don’t write off print as a viable media channel just yet. Over 80% of US consumers still subscribe to at least one magazine and 83% believe newspapers are still relevant. Experimenting with video in print pubs like Entertainment Weekly is but one of the ways certain magazine segments will hold onto their targets and satisfy their advertisers. Fashion magazines and enthusiast pubs continue to offer a visual showcase that is far superior to what most e-pubs can serve up. Models, both human and auto, simply look prettier in print. And while P&G shut down its 72-year-old TV soap opera Guiding Light in 2009, they are cranking up the presses with the custom published glossy, Rouge, which expects to reach a whopping 11 million North American households in 2010.

8. Go to the Video: Separate from the Pack
The emergence of viral video rankings in 2009 reflected the mainstreaming of this approach to audience engagement. While everyone and their branded brother aspired to cut through with a viral hit, surprisingly few found an audience. In 2010, marketers will undoubtedly crank out more of the same while a savvy few will worry less about mass reach and focus more on grass roots appeal, providing content that their core target really wants. B2B marketers in particular will find that using informative videos that transform the complicated into the comprehensible, like Commoncraft’s Plain English videos, will generate quality leads from grateful prospects.

9. Mobile Media: Catching Up at Last
Despite all the hype by this author and others, less than a third of marketers had a budget for mobile in 2009. In 2010, smart phone penetration should rise to at least 25% (from 17% in Q2 ‘09) making it a lot easier to deliver a rich mobile experience worthy of consumer attention. The blending of mobile and social apps like Facebook, Loop’d and Twitter has also created a new openness towards this medium.
Given the desirable demographics (18-34, HH income $75k+) of smartphone owners, at minimum, marketers should give strong consideration to creating a mobile friendly website, thus allowing prospects to engage whenever and wherever they happen to be.

10. Be Positive: Attitude is Everything
While honesty is a worthy friend to marketers, don’t forget that almost no one wants to date a Debbie Downer. A recent poll by Adweek/Harris found “relative little enthusiasm and lots of indifference for ads that refer to the downturn.” Even if the economy is slow to recover in 2010, find the silver lining for your customers and prospects with both words and actions. Like the athletes whose positive outlooks and superior skills propel them to victory, so, too, can marketers find success with an upbeat message and an unimpeachable value proposition.

May 2010 Serve You Well
While 2009 hasn’t been much fun for most marketers, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the approaching year. There are more ways than ever to engage with consumers and a new willingness from consumers to engage with brands. Marketers are showing a renewed desire to listen to their customers and offer “marketing as service” that favors the dissemination of meaningful value over disruptive messaging. So here’s to serving your customers but serving up some great marketing in 2010!

BRANDWEEK ran an expansive special section on Experiential Marketing this week that included some pithy quotes from yours truly. Since this is a topic I tend to think a lot about, here are extensive notes from my conversation with BRANDWEEK reporter Michael Applebaum a couple of months ago.

Great experiential marketing programs

Experiential marketing comes in a lot of flavors which makes it tough to generalize what makes a program great. For some clients, it is enough to have created an engaging trial-focused experience during which the consumer consumes the product or service in a reasonably memorable fashion. For others, the ultimate goal is buzz, as measured by PR coverage, word of mouth or on occasion trade reactions. Still others seek to establish a continuing relationship with the target, so online registration becomes the ultimate measure of effectiveness. A truly great program, in my opinion, does all of the above and then some.

A truly great experiential program first and foremost is so appealing the consumer wants to engage with the brand. It is the opposite of disruptive advertising which like an unwanted door-to-door salesman intrudes into the home. Great experiential marketing is not shoving a donut in someone’s face on the street and then saying “try our bank.” To be appealing, marketers need to offer a reasonable exchange of value, during which the consumer gives up his/her time while the brand provides the experience and usually some free stuff!

Done correctly these experiences can have exponential impact which is important since 1:1 experiences can be pricey. If an experience is targeted at the right influencers, then these influencers will undoubtedly share their experiences. If the physical experience has an online component, then there is an opportunity for both WOM and a deeper relationship with that consumer. If an experience is sufficiently newsworthy, millions of other interested parties can be influenced by the event(s).

Renegade’s rules of thumb for a great experience are as follows:

• the experience is fresh enough that the press wants to write about it;
• the experience is relevant to the story you want to tell about the brand;
• the experience has legs well beyond one single event and/or one single communication channel;
• the experience is entertaining and enlightening;
• the experience is so engaging that the consumer wants tell his/her friends about it.

This is not about just getting attention. There is an old adage in our business, “If you want attention, put a gorilla in a jockstrap and stand him on a street corner.” This is about engagement. Mutually beneficial engagement.

Lots of industries are turning to experiential marketing

Food and beverage companies are old hands at this since sampling is essential to growing their businesses. Brands like Pepsi AMP go to extreme lengths to sample their product to the right target–they handed out as many as 5 million samples this summer. Alcohol brands are creating mini-experiences in bars, clubs and restaurants with extraordinary frequency across the US. Entertainment companies like to include experiential programs in the mix often with the hope of creating a “must see” buzz prior to launch. B2B brands are also crafting experiences with greater frequency (examples available if you need them).

Lately, we’ve been noticing a lot of brands pulling from the Experiential 101 Playbook:

• The World Record—Wise potato chips set the world record for most chips crunched at the same time at a Mets game this summer. Not exactly New York Times material but surely some pub out there besides the Guinness Book was interested.

• The Pop-Up Store–Southwest Airline is the latest airlines to set up a pop-up in Manhattan theirs being a café-like setting in Bryant Park. Now defunct Song tried a pop-up store in 2004—unfortunately the store experience was better than the airline itself.

• User Generated Content—a lot of experiential programs start by asking the consumer to create some kind of content. HSBC’s Soap Box and JetBlue’s Story Booth (both by JWT) ask the man on the street to provide their points-of-view. This “content” was then turned into ads and online communications. A smaller scale example comes from a small Canadian Beer Company called Okanagan Beer that challenged consumers to tell them why the brand should sponsor their events/parties. This content was then repurposed into a 360° campaign and sales jumped 30% — this is definitely on my list of “wish we’d done that.”

There are lots of ways to measure experiential marketing

As for research, there are so many different kinds of experiences and a corresponding amount of measurement tools depending on the objectives. We like to use Net Promoter Score on a pre/post basis as a measure of the experience itself. We have seen 30-40 point swings in likeliness to recommend a brand to a friend after exceptional experiences. In theory, every brand can measure the value per customer gained and/or the value of increased loyalty per customer. For example, if a brand experience makes you twice as likely to buy and/or recommend a brand, then one can compute the increase in lifetime value of that customer. That said, the math can get fuzzy pretty quickly. That’s why PR coverage is so important. Great press coverage can extend the reach of a program, making it more comparable to measuring the effectiveness of a media or PR program.

Latest trends in experiential marketing

First, mobile devices are becoming integral parts of brand experiences. An iPhone app can start an experience. An in-bar trivia contest answered via text messages can start an engagement. Mobile is part of a bigger trend to integrate technology into the experience and extend beyond the physical into the virtual world. Event experiences are often extended via Facebook and Twitter programs. Event experiences can be used to introduce on online extension, like Frito/NFL’s hunt for the most “fanatical football family.” And of course, social media is playing an ever increasing role in starting and extending brand experiences. An experiential program Renegade created for Toasted Head wine has evolved into an on-going Facebook program that keeps the faithful engaged.

Second, microevents are starting to get big. Royal Caribbean held 1000+ “Cruisitude” parties at homes of former cruisers. As I mentioned earlier, alcohol brands are hosting small events at bars almost nightly to engage their targets.

Where to start

Marketers are best to start with “the why,” not “the how.” If they know why they want to create experiences then it is much easier to figure out the how. If trial is key, then the experience can be built around that. If they are doing it to stretch marketing dollars, then getting buzz & PR should probably be the top priority. From there, we recommend marketers focus on “the do,” not “the say.” What is it that you can do for your target that will make them want to engage with you? Sometimes “the do” is just free stuff but often “the do” can be more substantial. Sports car owners like to drive fast but rarely get to do it legally. “The do” for BMW was a Performance Driving School for its customers. Road warriors scamper about airports looking for places to charge their gear. “The do” for Samsung was charging stations in airport terminals.

Co-authored by Dick Bondy, this article first ran on iMediaConnection.com.

The lessons of the “rags to riches” Obama campaign continue to inspire marketers of all disciplines; even those involved in corporate rebranding and launch events. Having looked at the general lessons that I describe in In-bound from Obama: 10 Ideas for 2009, this article applies the Obama playbook to the launch of a new corporate brand and is based on interviews, conducted by Dick Bondy, with communications leaders at major corporations including Xerox, ArcelorMittal, Grant Thornton and Thomson Reuters among others.

Stand for Something
Obama combined a simple, rational message – Change, with an emotional and empowering call to action – Yes we can. Competing candidates quickly adopted the change mantra but Obama’s status as an outsider and the fact that he was there first, rendered his positioning unassailable. Allen Adamson, Managing Director of Landor Associates, NY, writes, “The most successful brands today are based on ideas that are not just different and relevant, but simple.” Johnson Controls, in their 2007 rebranding, adopted a simple tagline, “Ingenuity Welcome” – a signal to customers, prospects, current and future employees. And they followed this up with an annual “Ingenuity Day” devoted to new product brainstorming by all employees. Smith & Nephew, the British medical products conglomerate, restructured and identified their mission as “helping people regain their lives by repairing and healing the human body.” When AkzoNobel rebranded after the ’08 acquisition of ICI, they identified the simple and clear goal of becoming “one company in one year.”

Capture and Empower Your Fan Base
Obama broke new ground for a political candidate by his use of the web to build a database of supporters and to engage them in a conversation, ultimately using his disciples to spread his message. Deloitte Touche recently encouraged employees worldwide to create short videos on what Deloitte means to them. The Deloitte Film Festival, resulted in 370 videos, created by employees at all levels of the firm, engaging more than 1,200 participants. This initiative substantially strengthened the firm’s global community. Released to YouTube, the films introduce the firm to potential young employees in a uniquely relevant way.

Turn on the Videos
YouTube was a vital medium for Obama’s campaign, and continues after inauguration – the weekly Presidential address, traditionally on radio, is now a video released to YouTube and also available on the White House website. Not many corporations have used the internet to support a rebranding, but when the 2007 ArcelorMittal merger created the world’s largest steel company it was necessary to quickly create a dialogue with 330,000 employees in 60 countries, to allay concerns and maintain focus on the business, during the five months required to build and launch the new brand. The web played a key role, hosting ArcelorMittalTV.com – a series of 12 films featuring employees raising questions/concerns about the merger, the new company’s mission, and business strategies going forward. Management addressed questions in a blog accompanying each video episode. The video series is available on YouTube for the public as well, and has been downloaded at the rate of 15,000 per day.

Lighten Things Up
Obama’s campaign was notable for its sense of humor, in many cases, forcing his opponents on to the late night talk circuit, to their comparative disadvantage. Levity hasn’t played much of a role in recent rebrandings but two companies have staged launch events in a decentralized way that encourages employee creativity and cements their relationship to the new brand. Both Grant Thornton and Johnson Controls faced the need to foster greater collaboration between offices across the world and encourage consistent use of the new corporate identity. Rather than a single, corporate-staged brand launch, these firms had each office create their own event, with HQ providing only identity guidelines and materials. From office to office, there were cakes baked featuring the new logo; people arrived at work dressed in the corporate colors; offices were painted in the corporate palette; flag raisings and tent meetings were held. In both cases, the ceremonies were videoed and edited into a corporate film distributed back to all employees on the websites. No doubt the freedom of each office to incorporate levity, local customs and cultures, helped to build relevance for the corporate brand.

Touch Your Target
Inclusive events and personal conversations were also hallmarks of the Obama campaign. Corporate communicators ignore the power of one-on-one communication at their peril, when projecting a new brand and mission. Several of the companies in my study went to extraordinary lengths to connect to the broad employee base. There’s no better example than CEC Bank – the former Romanian state banking monopoly, rebranded in 2008 to compete with global banks for the first time. In order to introduce employees to the general concept of a brand, let alone CEC’s own brand, there were engagement sessions averaging 15 hours with all 6,700 of the bank’s employees, as well as their union’s officials. After the Thomson Reuters rebranding was broadcast around the world by satellite, CEO, Tom Glocer embarked on a 30-day world tour. The primary objective – speak with employees about the goal of “One Company in one Year”. Likewise, after Rockwell Collins introduced its new brand, Dave Yeoman, Director of Corporate Communications, held informal, brown bag lunches with employees in his travels to company facilities around the world.

Measure Green, Make Green
Clearly the Obama campaign benefited from the support of environmentalists. Every organization is being judged by its sustainability. Outside of companies whose business is the environment (BP, GE, etc.) this is an area that has been largely ignored in corporate rebranding events. A few bright spots: Smith & Nephew, in its rebranding, shipped flat corrugated boxes, printed with the new brand identity elements, to all offices, to be assembled and displayed on site – a cost and energy saving tactic. Of course, Grant Thornton and Johnson Controls’ locally staged events saved the energy that would have been required to send large groups of employees to central locations. The same with CSC, which used a “follow the sun” strategy to launch their brand, country by country, at noon in each time zone. But by in large, environmental concerns have not been at the forefront when launching new corporate brands. No doubt this will change.

Do Well by Doing Good
Obama raised unprecedented sums by convincing millions to “give a little money for the cause of change” making people feel they were part of a “movement.” With this as a backdrop, it has never been clearer that social responsibility will increasingly drive consumer loyalty. The launch of a new identity is an excellent opportunity to communicate the corporate mission and vision by incorporating strategic social responsibility. I haven’t seen this done yet. Perhaps Smith & Nephew, (“Helping people regain their lives by repairing and healing the human body.”) could initiate a program to donate artificial joints to people in need, and involve employees as well. Or Johnson Controls could donate thermostats to Habitat for Humanity. No matter what the corporate mission, there is an opportunity to use charity as a strategic reinforcement of the brand position. This should be baked into every brand launch.

Define your Value
Corporations, just like political candidates, increasingly need to define their value in simple, unambiguous terms. This is job number one for every corporate rebranding. Of the recent examples, Thomson Reuters illustrates this best. Their value proposition is the transformation of an increasing amount of raw information into “intelligent information” for professionals and businesses. As their advertising tagline describes it, “Information to Act”. The nexus of their brand launch was Times Square, arguably the most chaotic place on earth. The identity reveal, on six Jumbotron screens, created the new logo out of a random array of swirling shapes, metaphorically creating order out of chaos – transforming information to “intelligent information.

Spend it if You’ve Got It
The current economy, while producing fear in most marketers, provides ample opportunity to those with relevant, differentiated positions, willing to take advantage of retreating competition. When a company rebrands, it’s a mistake to downplay the launch event in an effort to conserve budget. The launch event is key to the success of a corporate rebranding. It serves as a platform for management to inspire and lead. It can signal the promise of a merger or acquisition. It can help capitalize on a strategic shift, and set the tone to guide relationships between a corporation, its employees and customers. But, no matter how skillfully crafted the strategy and design of the new identity, without a well thought-out and executed launch, the message sent can be quite the opposite of what is intended.

About the Authors…
Dick Bondy and Drew Neisser met “100” years ago when they both worked at Lord, Geller, Federico & Einstein. Since then, Dick has focused on B2B marketing and become a leading expert in corporate rebranding and their accompanying launch events. Drew has focused on more non-traditional marketing approaches, founding Renegade in 1996, the company he now owns and continues to helm. You can reach them at dickbondy@gmail.com and dneisser@rengade.com.

To succeed in social media, brands would be wise to LIAISE, a six-step process to connect with consumers: Listen, Identify, Activate, Integrate, Socialize, Evaluate.

Today’s issue of BRANDWEEK provided a rather scaled back overview of 2008 Guerrilla Marketing which included a short and sweet quote from yours truly. Given the brevity of the article, I thought I’d post my full interview notes.

BW: Can you see the current economic downturn as having a direct effect on guerrilla marketing either how it’s done, its frequency of use, or anything else?

DN: Here’s the good news, our phone is ringing off the hook from clients looking to gain more impact out of limited resources. The bad news is that when they say “limited” they really mean next to nothing so its getting a lot harder to manage expectations! One huge change is the number of clients requesting “social media” and/or viral marketing programs. There is a clear perception in the marketplace that these non-traditional approaches could have exponential impact for the dollars invested. Undoubtedly, when dollars get short, clients will look for innovative ways to cut through.

BW: Aside from the recession, are there any big trends affecting guerrilla marketing that you’re seeing?

DN: Several. Consumers are increasingly savvy and resilient to street team activity. Unless you are offering a clear value proposition (like cool free stuff) or have a truly entertaining “show,” consumers will simply ignore your efforts. Today more than ever, guerrilla marketing needs to deliver a demonstrable exchange of value. The same holds true for online guerrilla efforts. As many wishful thinking viral video producers have discovered, very few videos actually get discovered and most of those are consumer generated versus corporate creations. In the “wild west” of viral, slick messages rarely cut it. Consumers find the genuine, the raw, the crazy, far more appealing than the slick, the packaged or the profound.

BW: In the age of the iPod, with people so shut off from normal streetawareness, is guerrilla marketing less effective than it used to be? I mean, not too long ago, a pedestrian might be wearing a Walkman, but in general he or she was pretty plugged in to the street landscape. But these days, thanks to digital devices like cell phones and iPods, you can hermetically seal yourself in a world of your choosing, even as you walk around. Does that theoretically render guerrilla marketing less effective?

DN: First, let me note that we consider guerrilla marketing to be broader than street team stuff. Like the man who first defined the term, Jay Conrad Levinson, we consider guerrilla marketing to be a mindset that overcomes a lack of funds with resourcefulness and innovation. Under that definition, guerrilla marketing is constantly evolving, addressing the realities of changes in consumer behavior. To be effective, guerrilla marketing has to be more than disruptive. It has to be appealing enough that someone in a walking cocoon actually wants to stop and engage. Ironically, guerrilla approaches actually have an advantage these days over traditional TV advertising which are getting zapped before they even get a chance to be seen. Guerrilla marketers are figuring out how to engage consumers with all their devices, such as having billboards that interact with mobile devices, etc. Also, for many “too hip for ad” brands, the guerrilla medium is the message. These brands can’t be seen as selling out by doing mainstream advertising and instead present themselves in ways that are as fresh as the brand and the target themselves. Street art, viral videos, widgets and on-premise stunts all fall into the “we’re cool cats” category.

All that said, consumers are more savvy about all types of marketing these days. The bar is higher for everyone. True engagement requires a fresh idea regardless of the medium. If people are wearing headphones, guerrilla marketers need to offer music to their ears, literally or physically.

If you think the marketing challenges of 2009 look daunting, imagine for a moment you were Barack Hussein Obama back in 2007. Being an unknown, untested, awkwardly-named black man with limited resources going against one of the biggest brand names in Democratic politics, you’d hardly anticipate a victory in the playoffs, much less a win in the finals. Yet, that is exactly what happened. Obama’s remarkable success offers a clear and prescient 10-point playbook for marketers who want to beat the odds in 2009.

Stand for Something
Knowing that 70% of the country thought the government was headed in the wrong direction, Obama offered a simple, consistent and rational message: “change.” He coupled that with an empowering and emotional call to action, “yes we can.” By appealing to both the rational desire for change and the emotional need for hope, Obama presented his brand as a movement and embraced the notion that former P&G CMO Jim Stengel calls “purpose-based marketing.” As the game gets rougher in 2009 and resources tighter, clarifying your purpose as a brand will be that much more significant. It will help you keep communications on point, your internal team inspired and your target more inclined to cast their vote for your brand.

Capture Your Fan Base
President-elect Obama’s use of the internet to build his fan base was unprecedented by all measures. As of November 4th, his website database included over 3 million hard-core fans that not only contributed millions in campaign funding but also volunteered to make calls, send emails and knock on doors. Members received a steady stream of emails including video, with specific calls to action keeping the fans motivated and on-point. He even had over 128,000 tweets tracking him via Twitter.

In what may be an historic use of email, he reached out to this group before his acceptance speech noting “I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.” This legion of supporters was ready for mobilization at a click of a mouse, something that any marketer could find invaluable. While the notion of building a large database of users is not new, the importance of having such a base is compounded in a weak economy since email can be so cost effective at driving sales, word-of-mouth and loyalty. Make it a priority in 2009 to build an army of followers.

Empower Your Fan Base
Some marketing pundits are calling Obama’s campaign the first to truly apply web 2.0 techniques to the presidential race. According to exit polls, Obama won nearly 70% of the under 25 vote, a share percentage that any marketer would covet. If you haven’t looked at My.BarackObama.com, I highly recommend you take a tour (for a short cut watch the introductory video) and imagine this was your customer loyalty program. Then pop over to Facebook and MySpace, where Obama gathered over 4 million combined supporters, and imagine that this was how your brand leveraged social networks.

The key will be to truly engage your target, inviting them to join a conversation versus peddling your wares. If you do it right, at least 1 in 4 social networkers will gladly download branded content and 1 in 5 will post marketer-related content on their home page. One way or another, be sure to cast your marketing vote for social media in 2009.

Turn on the Videos
This campaign inspired unprecedented levels of online video viewing. On YouTube alone there were over 30 million views of Obama-related videos including the Yes We Can music video (14mm), Obama Girl (12.1mm) and his interview on Ellen (4.8mm). And of course millions more watched the highly damaging interview of Sarah Palin by Katie Couric.

While few brands can hope to gain this kind of following for their videos on YouTube, marketers would be remiss not to create them and use the videos for a variety of purposes from sales presentations to PR, online ads to viral. If you can get you fans to create the videos via user generated content programs, all the better. If not, be sure to keep your production costs low so you have some money to drive “seed” traffic.

Lighten Things Up
One of the more remarkable aspects of the Obama campaign is how he never lost his cool and in fact found moments for levity throughout. His appearance on Letterman a week before the election showed his lighter side as they laughed about Sarah Palin’s “lipstick on a pig” line. Not that Obama can take credit for it but I’m sure he is grateful to Tina Fey and the folks at Saturday Night Live who brilliantly lampooned Palin to the point that her only hope was to face the SNL camera directly—which of course was too little too late.

The point of all this is that comedy is still king and, as marketers, we need to keep things light especially in this dark economic period. Even typically serious B2B companies can find a place for humor. Tibco’s hilarious Greg The Architect video series has helped them connect with IT professionals who welcome a break from endless coding and relentlessly boring vendor pitches.

Touch Your Target
Despite all the success of his emails and videos, Obama never forgot the importance of the meet and greet. His campaign went to extraordinary lengths to have personal conversations with millions of Americans. His events were inclusive versus exclusive, holding his nomination acceptance speech at INVESCO Field in Denver and his victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago.

With budgets declining and the “stay at home economy” emerging, marketers might be inclined to rely on advertising and cut back on event/experiential marketing. This would be a mistake. Savvy marketers like Dress Barn have figured out that their customers actually want to get out of their homes and connect with their friends, which explains why Dress Barn’s in-store Very Indulgent Parties are so popular they are struggling to get them all on the calendar in each of their markets.

Measure Green, Make Green
While the economy was clearly the focus of the presidential campaign, during the primaries Obama credited the support of environmentalists who among others helped push him to victory. The Obama-Biden “New Energy for America” plan is an aggressive call for all companies to examine their carbon footprint and do something about it.

Expect to hear more about “supply chain environmentalism” which calls for marketers not only to consider what goes into their products but also to track the environmental impact of their entire supply chains. This in turn will create opportunities for companies like Enviance, whose software helps large companies measure and track emissions, and sites like GoodGuide.com, which rates products by their “greenness.” Green-savvy marketers will make the tracking of their environmental initiatives transparent, which will appeal to shareholders, regulators and potential consumers.

Do Well by Doing Good
The Obama campaign enlisted millions to give a little money for the cause of “change.” People stepped up because they felt part of something bigger than themselves. Now with donations to non-profits declining in lock step with the tanking economy, marketers have a unique opportunity to step up and show consumers they care about more than just sales, and prove that they are concerned with the well being of the community.

A recent PR Week study shows a close relationship between consumer perception and corporate social responsibility—companies that are well known for doing good have stronger word of mouth and more loyal customers. For example, 63% of Americans claim to have purchased a product because of a charitable association with the brand. The key is to pick a non-profit that makes sense for your organization, get employees involved and to make the support meaningful like Home Depot’s commitment to Habitat for Humanity to whom it is donating $30 million for a national green building project called “Partners in Sustainable Building.”

Define your Value
Taxes remained a dirty word in the 2008 presidential race as rising unemployment and falling home prices led to tightened pocketbooks. Marketers are facing a newly chastened non-consuming consumer with 65% of moms eliminating purchases that aren’t “absolutely necessary” and 52% who are just plain “cutting back” according to an Allen & Gerritsen study. It’s gotten so bad that orders for mall Santa Clauses are down 50% from 2007.

Few consumer-dependent companies can hope to thrive is this environment, but those with a clear value proposition will do less poorly. Wal-Mart is still seeing modest year-on-year increases, no doubt because of their clear value position. Starbucks, once an affordable luxury, has suddenly become an expensive afterthought. To compete in this dismal economy, your value proposition will be tested like never before as businesses and consumers ask, “Do I really need that?”

Spend It if You Got It
Ultimately, Obama ended up with the largest war chest in history, outspending McCain in some markets by as much as 4 to 1. In a zero sum game like politics, where the loser goes home, there is no holding back and you spend every last penny you raise (and then some.) Marketers, on the other hand, need to align their budgets with sales goals and make the most of what they’ve got. Ironically, with so many marketers cutting back, there are rare opportunities: from inexpensive sponsorships to remnant ad space both offline and online. Even search prices are expected to soften.

Category leaders will use this downturn to increase their share and upstart innovators will take advantage of retreating competition. Opportunity abounds for those marketers who classify marketing as an investment for their future, who believe that regardless of the short-term economic obstacles, brands will be built and history will be made.

Published: July 28, 2008 in AdAge

It’s just common sense that if you give a little, you’ll usually get a little in return. But to paraphrase President Harry S. Truman, that (inadvertent) font of marketing wisdom, “If common sense were so common, more [marketers] would have it.” Marketing is nothing more or less than an exchange of value. The better the value the marketer provides, the more time and attention they’ll usually get back from their target. If the value delivered by the marketer is exceptional, then the consumer will pay back the marketer with loyalty and brand evangelism in good times and bad.

Marketing as service is about transforming your communications from mere messaging into an exceptional value that consumers will seek out. To quote Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom, “Marketing as service is where brands actually give consumers something they want or need,” as opposed to hitting them over the head with messaging they’d rather zap or ignore. While Ad Age and others have chronicled examples of this savvy approach, no one to my knowledge has put forth a how-to guide for marketing as service, so let’s just say, the buck starts here.

Because of our relentless desire to cut through, we are an industry that always likes to focus on the latest and greatest. Ironically, much could be learned from the past. As President Truman put it, “There is nothing new in the world except the history [of marketing] you do not know.” Ad Age recently reported on a “new path” being pursued by Crocs to help pedestrian explorers with online walking guides. And while Cities by Foot is indeed a fine example of marketing as service, it is by no means a true innovation.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Michelin Guide. Way back in 1900, André Michelin created a driver’s guidebook to France to help drivers see the best restaurants of the country while keeping their cars in good shape. It included addresses of places such as gas stations, garages, tire repair shops, and public toilets. Set up 108 years before Cities by Foot, the Michelin Guide remains a quintessential example of marketing as service, educating customers, enhancing their lives and doing so in a highly relevant manner.

It’s hard to create a meaningful service for your customers and prospects if you don’t know all that much about them. And while some might choose to follow President Truman’s advice to “Always be sincere, even if you don’t mean it,” it is essential to have a genuine insight when pursuing marketing as service. Find that insight somewhere within the passions and miseries, the days and nights, the aspirations and disappointments, and the loves and hates of your target universe. Genuine insight will uncover a service that matters, a service the target will truly appreciate.

Street cred
Nike spent years hangin’ with action sports enthusiasts before it launched a social network on Loop’d to target them. After struggling to crack the code, Nike learned the hard way that this group is keenly sensitive to “posers” and will call out a false note faster than you can say “backside 360 ollie.” According to a Nike 6.0 spokesperson, “we reach out to our athletes for insight and validation. They are a crucial part of our brand, and we would not be where we are at without them.”

Some marketers have expressed concern about losing control of their brand in this newfangled Web 2.0 world. I urge them to consider these prescient words from the first president to address the American people from the White House, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” My advice to marketers is to just let go, because you aren’t in control anyway. Offer your customers a way to inspire subversive comic books, and reward their creativity with outrageous parties like Colt 45. “The Tales of Colt 45″ program, now in its second year, celebrates “the most notable [customer] adventures involving the famed malt liquor” in a four-booklet series that also promote a five-market nightclub tour where new adventures will undoubtedly unfold. Or, like Jones Soda, maintain your cult following by letting your customers design your product labels.

Similarly, T-shirt company Threadless has built a reportedly multimillion-dollar business in eight years by encouraging its customers to submit designs and choose the shirts it will print. Best yet is Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade goods. Etsy has over 1 million registered users that it supports creatively with online classes and resource locations and conversationally with forums, blogs and chat rooms. They have also created a request-based marketplace where buyers can post what they want and sellers can bid on the job. In a recommendation economy, all of these represent powerful ways to drive positive word of mouth and build brand loyalty.

Marketers have a tendency to get tired of their successes far sooner than most consumers. The reality is that when you hit upon a really good marketing as service program, you need to stick with it for a while. Maybe you can’t foresee a 100-year-plus commitment such as Michelin, but how about more than a decade such as Camp Jeep? American Express has offered exclusives for gold- and platinum-card members for more than 20 years, and the BankCab has been driving customers to HSBC for more than six years. And lest we fall victim to the Truman proverb, “Being too good is apt to be uninteresting,” keep things fresh with periodic upgrades, ensuring that your marketing buck never stops working for you.

this article was published by iMediaConnection on July 25th, 2008:

Recent Nike and Visa campaigns provide true value to customers and prospects. Learn how to boost your brand through similar online strategies.

Leading brands can maintain their competitive edge by transforming their communications from mere messaging to campaigns that provide genuine value to customers and prospects alike. Although a number of smaller brands have embraced the concept of “marketing as service” to expand their customer base and increase loyalty within their niches, it is even more telling when two savvy marketers like Nike and Visa shift ad dollars in this direction.

The notion of providing what some call “brand utility” via marketing communications is not necessarily new. (Consider Michelin guides, for example.) However, the ubiquity of the web and social media has created extraordinary opportunities in this area for big and small companies. And while neither Nike nor Visa is a newcomer to this pursuit, they have recently upped the ante with their respective online efforts.

Nike Boot Camp is a veritable tour de force that no aspiring soccer player should miss. Aiming to provide a “world-class training program,” Nike immodestly boasts that it can “turn you into a high-performance soccer player.” The company attempts to demonstrate its promise of “30 percent improvement in your power, speed and stamina” through action-packed, handheld video and inspirational comments from top players.

As one blogger described it, “It’s basically a digital soccer class you can take for either 4 or 6 weeks. Genius.” By providing this so-called class, Nike is demonstrating that it truly appreciates the ambitions of serious young soccer players. (Keep in mind that soccer is now the single largest participation sport in the U.S.) I’m personally not a fan of the company’s emphasis on the phrase “next level” (see my rant). However, after watching the site’s videos of men running with parachutes on their backs for resistance, I have to admit that Nike is setting new standards here.

Nike is hardly a newbie when it comes to using the web to provide valuable content to its targets. Earlier NikeFootball.com renditions included soccer trick video clips from all over the world that viewers could rate. This feature was both entertaining and useful, especially since kids could attempt the tricks they saw at home. Indeed, the utility of the old site was indisputable. Further, soccer isn’t the only sport for which Nike is allocating more marketing dollars and spending less on traditional advertising — the Nike+ program has been keeping pace with runners’ needs for the past two years.Just a few weeks ago, Nike 6.0 — which focuses on action sports products — launched a branded community for skaters, bikers and surfers on Loop’d. With its profiles and photo sharing, this community offers the usual functionality of a social network, but its users are also given the opportunity to compete for commercial partnerships — a pretty darn cool feature for enthusiasts. This program provides further utility with a mix-and-match mashup that can be ported over to other social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

Like Nike, Visa is an overall market leader — but not necessarily in every market segment. In order to gain currency with small business owners who have many other options, including both MasterCard and American Express, Visa recently launched the Visa Business Network on Facebook. Rather than simply running more ads (Visa spends a whopping $675 million or so annually), the company elected to provide real utility in multiple ways for the small office–home office, or SOHO, crowd.

Recognizing that small business owners might not have discovered the power of Facebook, Visa provides a series of pleasantly digestible bite-sized videos. Each video includes a real-life business, such as a cheese shop and an eyeglasses store, and demonstrates how the company tapped into Facebook’s highly viral network. Additionally, to make it easy for small businesses to get started, Visa is offering a $100 advertising credit to the first 20,000 that sign up. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

Visa is not just dipping its toes into this effort — it is diving in head first. Partners including AllBusiness, Entrepreneur, Forbes.com and the Wall Street Journal will provide relevant news and commentary to network subscribers. Google will provide support with mashups and online software, while Microsoft will bring its software heft to the party. All in all, Visa has arranged a veritable armada of content, tool kits and savvy that no small business would want to be without.

By helping these businesses connect with their customers online, Visa is providing a truly valuable service that should help the cash registers ring all the way around. We can certainly expect MasterCard and American Express to watch this social networking experiment very carefully and to serve up their own iterations at some point. Undoubtedly, they won’t be giving credit where credit is due.Even to the trained skeptic, the logic of befriending your best customers on Facebook is inescapable. Small business owners are particularly susceptible to word of mouth; positive WOM can drive customer acquisition, and negative WOM can send sales into a tailspin. A 2007 study by McKinsey found that 27 percent of all one-on-one conversations included some serious discussion of products or services.

The formula being employed by Nike and Visa is reasonably simple: create a service that prospects and customers can use, make it easy for them to share this service with their friends, and use advertising to jumpstart initial interest in the program. If the utility is there, prospects will inevitably become customers, customers will become brand evangelists, and neither will consider zapping the companies’ efforts.

This approach is not just for the big guys. Smaller companies can establish leadership within their niches by delivering genuine utility through their marketing activities. Constant Contact, a leading email marketing service, has managed to build a customer base of more than 100,000 small and medium-size businesses. About a year and a half ago, the company built a social network, ConnectUp!, for its customer base. ConnectUp brings together thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs who help each other solve real business problems, as well as share and gain insights on marketing and other topics of interest. To date, more than 8,000 members have joined ConnectUp. As a result, Constant Contact has expanded its leadership position and increased its market share.

So whether you are a global giant or just hoping to be the largest fish in your pond, you can maintain and enhance your position by using your marketing dollars to deliver real and ongoing utility to your customers and prospects. The web has opened a number of ways to transform your marketing into service — service that will boost word of mouth, increase conversation rates and keep the cash register ringing all the way through this sluggish economy.

This article appeared on iMediaConnection on July 7, 2008.

Check out these simple ways to convert prospects into customers and then into card-carrying brand evangelists.

#1. Consider marketing as service

Brand experiences, whether physical or virtual, if done correctly can convert prospects into customers and then customers into card-carrying brand evangelists. These experiences are by definition interactive, encouraging dialogue and ideally an intimate and unforgettable dance between brand and consumer. Here are four thoughts on how to turn your brand experiences into dances of a lifetime.

When brands create experiences that provide a real service, magical things happen. Because “marketing as service” provides a real value, the brand pulls customers and prospects into it, rather than pushing a message at them. This natural engagement deepens relationships with existing customers, forms strong bonds with new ones and helps generate favorable word of mouth.

Charmin showed its get-up-and-go when it installed restrooms in Times Square, providing welcome relief for more than a half million holiday tourists. The service was unexpected, memorable, relevant and good clean fun. Samsung has electrified road warriors by installing mobile device charging stations in five major U.S. airports. Given the annoying paucity of outlets in terminals, this service is pumping up Samsung’s image as a friend indeed to the mobile world.

#2. It all starts with an insight — even chotchkes!

In order to cut through effectively, the experience must derive from a sound strategic insight relevant to the brand. While handing out fun premiums might drive traffic, it rarely builds brand loyalty unless it extends the conversation and reinforces what the brand stands for. When my company’s client, Panasonic, wanted to engage action sports enthusiasts, they needed an insight that gave them permission to “hang” with this otherwise skeptical crowd. The insight they found was that capturing and sharing tricks was an inherent part of the action sports lifestyle. Since Panasonic made the video and still cameras that captured the tricks, and the TVs to see them on, they had a legitimate reason to “Share the Air” with this community.

Panasonic’s Share the Air program featured a camera loaner program at each of the five stops of the AST Dew Tour. With the swipe of a driver’s license, attendees got their hands on a new video or digital still camera to record the cool tricks that they saw during the day’s competition. And to make the experience memorable, participants could take a Panasonic-branded SD card home containing all of their pictures. The Share the Air microsite kept the experience alive, allowing attendees to blog with their favorite athletes on a daily basis, and deliver incentives to purchase Panasonic products at local dealers. All of these elements combined to make Panasonic a brand of choice among action sports enthusiasts.

#3. Extend the experience seamlessly

Ideally, an event will accomplish a variety of goals beyond informing and engaging an audience and generating buzz/PR. One essential function of an event is to drive prospects and customers to a complimentary online experience. Not only will this help amortize the high cost-per-touch of an event, but also it will lead to a long-term customer relationship by extending the experience.

In a perfect world, a single agency should have the capabilities to execute these complimentary event and online experiences. This approach is the most cost effective and ensures consistency of look and tonality across all channels of communication.

#4. Measure, measure and measure again

The goal should always be to cut through the first time. To accomplish this, metrics for success must be established upfront. Marketers need to set benchmarks via pre-event research to compare with post-event data.

In addition to tracking event attendance; time with brand and perceptual changes and sell-in and sell-through, consider adding Net Promoter Score to your measurement arsenal. NPS is a simple and reliable way to measure the likelihood of someone recommending your brand to a friend (i.e., word of mouth). Since NPS can be measured online as well, it will also help you understand if your online experience is as strong as the offline one.

Additional online metrics, including unique visitors, time-on-site, pre/post NPS and online commerce data (if relevant), will help complete the tally, ensuring you know which elements should be cut and which cut through.