Bright Ideas
new marketing mantras
For anyone working in marketing today, the speed at which communication tools and the marketplace evolve can seem daunting. Yet clear themes are recurring throughout all these changes, says communications strategist Tom Himpe. Brands that wish to build a strong connection with consumers today should abide by these three key principles
1. Be useful
These days consumers are increasingly in control of the messages that reach them, so brands need to create something that is genuinely useful in people’s daily lives in order to get through to them, rather than messaging them to death. This trend has been baptised ‘brand utility’ or ‘service marketing’.
Not surprisingly, online leads the way in this regard. Most global online brands, from Google to Wikipedia, from eBay to YouTube and Flickr to MySpace, have gained their status and success through simply providing people with free useful services. All these brands have utility at their very heart, and their best ongoing communication is the constant development and updating of tools and services. Which is exactly why Amazon has spent its media budget on free postage and packing rather than useless messaging. Other brands are following, realising they need to develop a more humble and facilitating attitude towards consumers. Evian has invested its media budget in free ‘Purity Spas’, which offer hot stone massages and detox treatments; Charmin invested in free public toilets in Times Square; and Bugaboo baby strollers created Bugaboo Day Trips, downloadable walking maps that allow parents and baby to enjoy the city together.
The need for more useful marketing also explains the exponential rise of widgets, which Newsweek has already announced as a potential candidate for product of the year 2007. Widgets are downloadable interactive applications that sit on your desktop, providing you with easy access to web content. They are the glue between people and the content they want. Many brands are developing useful widgets relating to their product or category in order to keep in touch with consumers on an ongoing basis. ESPN’s dashboard widget, for instance, includes customisable real-time sports scores and a sports news ticker.
2. Be interesting
Marketing has long protected brands from having to be genuinely interesting. With only attention-grabbing, interruptive media formats at their disposal, brands could get away with superficial and shallow messaging. But in the modern world, where long-form branded content, podcasts and immersive online experiences allow brands to create depth and story. Much as in real life, it helps to get a dialogue going if you have a few things to say after your opening line. One brand that suits this modern predicament is Audi, which has had the audacity to launch its own TV channel, broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week on Sky. Surpassing the 30-second format by a mile, the brand has created its own exclusive universe in which it can create an interesting relationship with people on an ongoing basis.
The need to be interesting is further fuelled by the surge in user-generated content. Let’s face it: consumers today are making more interesting stuff than many brands. Their output is more authentic, more personal, more imaginative, and more likely to grab people’s attention. Although it’s hardly new that advertising competes with all other expressions of culture, it’s becoming ever harder to create genuine interest with so much more content at our fingertips.
Some brands are leading the way. Rather than spending huge budgets on distributing their mediocre content, they have realised that genuinely interesting content can and will spread by itself. Nike created a one-take, amateur-like video of Ronaldinho doing some truly amazing football tricks. Dove created a one-minute film showing how a woman was transformed, through make-up, lighting and airbrushing, from ordinary to ‘perfect’. These two interesting and genuine pieces of content went around the globe with little or no supporting media budget.
3. Be transparent
It has become impossible for a company to hide its inner functioning,wrongdoings or inconsistencies from the general public. If companies are not treating customers the way they should, people will find out. If they’re not consistent throughout their messaging, people will lay bare the gaps. If their product doesn’t deliver on their promise, they will experience a backlash. Not even the biggest marketing budget in the world can guarantee companies today with that comfortable blanket that keeps the inside hidden from the outside.
Online reviews and recommendations, anticorporate documentaries, social networking and blogging have created hypertransparency, which, in turn, has made companies increasingly vulnerable when it comes to small mistakes, blatant errors, inconsistent behaviour or empty promises. In June 2006, Vincent Ferrari posted an audio file of himself speaking with an AOL representative, trying to cancel his AOL account. It took him 45 minutes to do so, because the AOL representative had resisted Ferrari’s request by attempting to keep the discussion focused on Ferrari’s reasons for wanting to cancel. The story got picked up by CNBC and received massive coverage both online and offline. Other individuals are looking for more radical ways to expose companies. WalMart and McDonald’s are among the companies who have had their products and inner workings probed by documentary makers.
The only right attitude in this regard is to be completely and utterly transparent. McDonald’s recently launched an attempt in transparency as a response to the damage caused by Morgan Spurlock’s SuperSizeMe documentary and Richard Linklater’s more recent Fast Food Nation. The fast-food giant selected a group of ordinary, open-minded people to become their quality scouts. These people were sent to McDonald’s farms and had to report back on what they had seen and experienced through an online platform (www.makeupyourownmind.co.uk). And any other person could ask any question they wanted on the website. Even tough or ridiculous questions were published and answered (such as ‘Is there really cow sperm in the burgers?’). But due to the controlled nature of the website, its true transparency remains doubtful for consumers
When it comes to creating a higher level of transparency, blogging has proven to be a perfect tool, as it is by nature about publishing people’s personal and honest views. As a result, a company that is heavily present in the blogosphere creates a more open and transparent relationship with the outside world. Although some companies have tried and may still be trying to manipulate the blogosphere with false profiles, blogs or posts, this has become the exception rather than the rule. Firstly, consumers are getting increasingly clever in decoding fake language. Secondly, stories of companies setting up fake blogs (Microsoft and Wal-Mart, for example) with disastrous PR results, have served to warn companies against this practice. Thirdly, a few false impressions can simply not compete with the avalanche of authentic content out there.
The truth of the matter is that, at the end of the day, being true to yourself takes a lot less effort than continuously faking you’re somebody else.
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