Category Archives: Social marketing

Social marketing – the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Posted on Thursday 5 May 2011 | 4 Comments

The survey published last week by Forrester and GSI Commerce seems to have put the cat among the social networking pigeons.  Now that our great new toy is proven to contribute no more than 2% to sales, all manner of doubts over the effectiveness of social marketing are finally being voiced.  Is the next big thing turning out to have been The Emperor’s New Clothes?

I’ve just spent the best part of a year creating a business unit that relied partly on social media, but throughout I found I was resisting pressure from my client to make social media the main strand of the strategy.  I’m sure that I am not alone in this experience.  After all, there are a lot of bright young things in consultancies with really funky names whose livelihood depends on them convincing folks that social marketing is all a business needs these days.  While common sense would tell you that many of the claims made for social don’t add up, it has seemed for a while that the momentum of the social media movement intimidated doubters into silence.  What Forrester has done is given these reluctant doubters license to tell it as they saw it all along.

Actually, I’m a believer in social media, but I’m a believer in all media so that’s no big deal.  What I don’t belive is that any medium is a panacea.  Social media like any other only work as an element of a bigger formula and, like all the other tools in our box, have to be managed.  In fact, if you want to get the best out of social media, you’ll find that they are actually quite labour intensive, so you should approach with caution.

You’ll also note that I have been trying to avoid referring to social media as “it”.  Social media come in many guises, so it’s definitely a case of “them” and its unlikely you’ll need them all.  The trick is to choose those that work for you and incorporate them with things like trad advertising, DM, PR, search, promotions, buzz, roaching and anything else that makes sense and play around with the formula until you find the mix that delivers the biggest return on the smallest investment.

For example FaceBook, may not be particularly effective in a BtoC strategy, but, if you are looking for a BtoB tool its going to be even less of a bargain.  After all, it makes no sense to try to strike up a business conversation with someone in a purely social forum, that’s not why they are there.  Forrster’s analysis tells us that on-line advertising and SEO are far more effective, but SEO only makes sense if a worthwhile number of prospects are using a manageable number of search terms.  In a recent project of mine there were dozens of search terms and key-words being used, each so infrequently that even if we could have resourced the SEO required to handle them all, it wouldn’t have produced a viable result.

The resourcing conundrum strikes again when a BtoC marketer hits social marketing pay-dirt.  I was recently involved with a restaurant chain that simply couldn’t manage a fraction of their mentions on Twitter and Face Book.  This meant that the numbers used to justify their social marketing strategy in the first place were meaningless. Marketing #101 – don’t invest in creating opportunities (and therefore expectations) that you can’t respond to.  Not only is it wasteful and therefore inefficient, but it pisses people off!

There’s no doubt that like many other business tools that have emerged over the years, Social Marketing has been over-hyped.  This is partly because some of the people doing the hyping don’t really understand it, or in fact marketing generally.  Social is a great idea and the tools that it embraces all undoubtedly have their uses, but that doesn’t mean that you have to take them all on board.  In fact, it may not be for you at all and it certainly isn’t a panacea.  Like any other medium, social will only work as a part of an integrated marketing strategy.

What Forrester have done is introduce a much-needed and timely element of realism to the situation.  Now we all have license to question the social media evangelists and I am sure social marketing will find its place among the many other tools that skilled and experienced marketers can combine into effective, integrated strategies.

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Posted in below-the-line, communications, efficiency, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, integrated marketing, marketing, phil darby, social groups, Social marketing, Social networking, The Full Effect Company, Uncategorized

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Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

Posted on Wednesday 23 June 2010 | 1 Comment

I’m endebted to Jerry Daykin and WantandBlog for Tweeting me the link to this masterful example of integrated social communications.  Its opportunities for creating stuff like this that gets me out of bed each morning!  For once there’s nothing I can add!

Don’t just watch the video I have embedded though, go to the site itself and get involved. Enjoy!

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Posted in brand development, branding, brandships, creativity, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, ideation, innovation, integrated marketing, integration, Jerry Daykin, phil darby, social groups, Social marketing, Social networking, The Full Effect Company, WantandBlog

The disappointing reality of Twitter

Posted on Thursday 10 June 2010 | 1 Comment

Twitter is a great tool when used creatively, but, don’t forget, it’s just medium like any other and the same rules apply.  There are a few brands that really work social networking and a few celebrities who bolster their brand by entertaining us in this new media space, but I find the majority of tweeters, in reality (because I think Twitter brings out the “real” in everybody) a bit of a let-down.  So, while we marketers push our clients into social networking, I can’t help wondering whether this isn’t a bit like giving a firearm to a toddler.

Quite smart people fail to fully understand what they are doing with Twitter.  For instance, I decided to follow the dragons from the TV series Dragons Den.  After all, they are accomplished business people so my expectation – reasonable I think – was that I might pick up a few business insights and maybe the inside track of a few Dragon’s Den stories.  How wrong could  I have been?  I can live with the fact that Deborah Meaden hasn’t used her profile.  At least she isn’t wasting my time or contradicting her on-screen brand persona.  Theo Paphitis started Tweeting, but gave up after a week.  Probably too busy counting his money – fair enough!  While James Caan seems to have grasped the golden rule of Twitter – If you haven’t got anything to say, shut up! Peter  Jones and Duncan Bannatyne, in contrast, must have done untold damage to their personal brands (although my guess is that Peter Jones’s brand equity had already been drastically diminished by his appearance on that ghastly TV commercial for insurance or something) by resorting to a drawn-out and vulgar public game of  one-upmanship – a constant barrage of claims and counter claims about whose holiday was most lavish and who had the most money.  A mistake on so many levels and very much in the realm of failing to deliver their brand promise, which, as any marketer knows, is the number one no-no for any brand.

You might argue that Stephen Fry, raconteur, wit and professional twit, has less to lose.  I’d expected a few one-liners maybe, clever use of 140 characters and elegant satire from him, but instead when opening my Twitter home page I was greeted each day with a torrent of meaningless and undecipherable text-speak, all from him.  I quickly “unfollowed”.

The BBC newsreader, presenter and journalist Susanna Reid might fall toward the “homely” end of the newsperson scale, but for heaven’s sake, a morning TV presenter is supposed to be smart.  On Twitter she appears decidedly dippy and spent three days last week canvassing advice on how to set up her i-Pad – hardly the place to get into a long forum-type discussion and definitely not one where a serious newsperson should be seen struggling with household appliances.  Very much out-classed by her co-presenter Sian Williams, who, at least, sticks to business.

Apart from shattering a few of my illusions, these Tweets, I have also just discovered, are having another more significant impact on my own brand.  Because my Tweet history is linked to my LinkedIn profile where they appear for everyone to see, I find I am inadvertently breaking one of my own basic rules for brands – “beware the company you keep”.  As I have said many times, consistency is the secret of a strong brand and the company it keeps, which means other brands, distributors, retailers, famous people and more, are taken as stong indicators of your values and beliefs.  The same applies to personal brands.  I should waste no time in acting on my instinct to unfollow the Tweeters that I have ben unimpressed by.

If I was disappointed by individual Tweeters corporate users have proven no better.  There are no brand communities more potent than those of retailers, but so few really get the Twitter and FaceBook thing.  I was talking about this to the head of marketing for one of the UK’s biggest restaurant chains a few weeks back and I’ve been sensitive to the way the sub-sector uses social networking ever since.  There are quite a few retail food chains that include Twitter and FaceBook in their communications portfolio, but the way they use the medium is very mixed.  For instance I have always considered Nandos to be a fun brand, ideally suited to Twitter, but a couple of weeks ago a bunch of international sportsmen were larging up Nandos on Twitter and there was no reaction from the company itself – an opportunity missed.  Similarly Taybarns had a load of  Tweets about a Carling promotion they were running and failed to leverage the opportunity.  This smacks of the old one-way communications habit that I thought had died out a few years ago and is the antithesis of what social networking is all about.  Twitter is for listening as well as talking.

Half using social networking is about as realistic as being a bit gay.  The fact is, either you are in or you are out and leveraging just some elements of Twitter doesn’t mean that the remaining elements aren’t working, it’s just that you aren’t controlling them. This applies to businesses and celebrities.  Maybe a Twitter account should come with a health warning “WARNING. TWITTER CAN SERIOUSLY JEPARDISE YOUR CREDIBILITY” or an induction course on how to, at least, avoid committing on-line hara-kiri.  The BBC at least seem to have spotted the dangers here and have sent Susanna Reid to it.  I know because she’s Tweeting the entire content live as I write this!  Probably the most interesting Tweets she’s sent so far in her Twitter experience.  I hope the first of many.

Oh, the power of the media and the innocence of those who don’t appreciate that the principles of branding apply to all of us!

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Posted in Uncategorized, brands, marketing, brand, phil darby, The Full Effect Company, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, promise, brand development, communications, Brand promise, branding, brand name, brand character, Social marketing, Social networking, Brand equity, brand Britain, Twitter, Tweet, Dragon's Den, Theo Paphitis, James Caan, Peter Jones, Duncan Bannatyne, Stephen Fry, Susanna Reid, Taybarns, Nandos

Social Networking – a force for good

Posted on Tuesday 25 May 2010 | 1 Comment

Liam Anderson just Tweeted a link to a TED talk on social networking by a very smart guy called Nicholas Christakis. You should take a look. His bottom line seems to be that, primally speaking, social networking drives the good in society.

This is a subject that I have pondered many times.  As you will probably know, I see brands as communities and this perspective drives all that I do as a marketer.  In the talks I deliver I often highlight the parallels between housing communities and brand communities.  You move into an area because you feel it reflects your standards and values, you aspire to fit in, or it is comfortable, which, by definition means that you have something in common with everyone else who lives there – even if that’s just that the place feels right.  However, every facet of your life is not replicated in every other local resident.  You have hobbies and interests, values and habits that are unique to you in that community and so in joining it you are also enriching it.

Take my son as an example.  He has an amazing network of friends.  Its a very close network of guys and their girlfriends who he has encountered at various points in his life in many different places.  Nicholas suggested in his talk that there are two distinct types of networks those where the “friends” are independent of each other and don’t know each other, their relationship being confined to the “host” and there are others where the friends are inter-connected, they know each other through the network.  The catalyst in both cases is the host who is either gregarious and introduces his friends to each other or is insular and protective of his relationships and keeps them separate.  Each type of network has its plusses and minuses as Nicholas points out and who is to say which, if either is right or wrong.  The important thing is that we recognise the difference.

It’s fair to say that my son’s friends’ lives have all been enriched by the network.  Each has shared their individual interests with the others and as a result there are sub-groups that go rock-walling, others play squash, a big group  hangs out in one guy’s big garden all summer grilling, drinking and playing volleyball.  The more they do together the stronger the community becomes and the broader its interests and the interests of the individuals.  From time to time members of the community have had a tough time and I’ve been amazed at the way the others, even the fringe members, have gathered around to offer support and practical help.  As Nicholas says, a force for good.

Because I see brand communities in the same way, its important to me that my clients provide opportunities for their community members to interact with each other and not just the host (my clients), but while most organisations these days do the social networking “talk”, very few indeed get around to the “walk”.  Brands have to be gregarious to be successful, they have to stand out, be communicative and above all confident enough to introduce their community members to each other.  Organise events like Saturn the US car-maker who each year take their customers on a tour of the factory, Harley Davidson, or the cycle manufacturer Yeti (my favourite bikes in the world) who organise events around the world for their owners to come together race, chat and party.  I blogged last week about Apple’s new dating site, which is another example.

Brand guardians should always remember that their community members will also be members of other communities (buy other brands) where their other interests and values are better represented, but the the successful brands are those that are central to their members lives and achieve the balance between keeping themselves and their products front-and-centre while maintaining a broad church.  What are you doing to build Brandships in your brand community?

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Posted in Apple, brand character, brand consultancy, brand development, Brand Discovery, Brand equity, Brand Model, Brand promise, branding, brands, brandships, community, customer, customers, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, Harley Davidson, integrated marketing, marketing, opportunity, phil darby, saturn Motors, Social marketing, Social networking, The Full Effect Company, Uncategorized, Yeti Cycles

Keep it fresh – the recipe for restaurant brand success

Posted on Thursday 6 May 2010 | Leave a comment

I was chatting yesterday with a chap who runs a load of restaurants … and I mean A LOAD!  Among the topics of our conversation were the “good old days” when the sophistocated man-about-my-neck-of-the-woods, out to cut a dash, took his “bird” to a Berni Inn.  In those days of course there were, by today’s standards, limited options for the young stud out to impress  – Wimpy, Berni Inns, the local pub where you might get that French delicacy “chicken-in-a-basket”, one of the emerging Chinese restaurants, and independents from Joe’s Caf to the more aspirational, Gino or Carlo’s.

By comparison, today’s aspiring roue is spoilt for choice.  Not only has there been a proliferation of independent eateries of all palates and ethnicities, the number of restaurant chains is enough to set plates spinning and because each one is desperate to establish a point-of-difference, today’s eating experience has become as much an entertainment as the date – especially if you have my luck!

I used to frequent Alastair Little’s restaurant in Frith Street, Soho where the man himself once told me that the average restaurant had a life of around three years, after which you had to reinvent yourself.  These days that rule of thumb at least hasn’t changed.  If you watch Gordon Ramsey’s antics on TV, you’ll know that the key to restaurant success is to devise a unique theme and then exploit it to the full.  This lesson has been adopted by all the big chains since TGI Friday’s, who recognised that while a new restaurant format will always add novelty value to an entertaining theme, for the punter, even the most compelling theme is great for two, or maybe three visits.  After that, unless something changes, you’ll find them asking “so what now?”.  If the answer is “nothing” they’ll be beating a path to the next food entertainment experience.  The “novelty effect” may also compensate for a few deficiencies, which gives you a narrow window of opportunity to iron out those niggly operational issues, but “narrow” is the important word here.  Pretty soon, its back to reality.

What we are talking about here is brand development and I love the restaurant business because it offers one of the clearest demonstrations of the concept of “brand community” and “brandships”, which has been my personal cause celebre for many years.

For a restaurateur this isn’t just a case of introducing new things to the menu, although that plays its part, you have to continually tweak other elements too.  Data management comes into play here as you define your segments and start to manage them.  You’ll have customer-segments, day-segments and seasonal demands that will probably all be heading in different directions out from your central theme and the devices you use to manage your community will be as diverse as these segments.  Starbucks discovered early on that day-segments demand different music and its a no-brainer that restaurant day-segments require different food, but that’s not only to accommodate the traditional meal variations, but different customer types – for instance, pensioners and young moms in the morning and groups of youngsters in the evening.

Its also not enough just to make changes, you have to make sure everyone recognises them.  I was in a chain restaurant recently that had a number of USPs and had introduced new items to its list, but none of them were highlighted.  That’s an ommission no operator can afford to make, but the ways in which you publicise development are as many and varied as your segments.  I don’t belive that Face book and Twitter are the panacea that some marketers suggest they are, but we are talking social networking here and while grannies don’t Tweet much, (unless you squeeze them really hard!) if you have a “youth” segment you can use this medium intelligently to drive awareness of the changes and maintain the freshness of your brand.  Press Relations and grass roots events will play their part in heightening awareness of your brand and its freshness, as will viral, personal appearances, demonstrations and good, old-fashioned advertising and PoS, plus, don’t forget your floor staff – dif’rent folks, dif’rent strokes!

Like any brand community a restaurant brand is a constantly evolving thing with opportunities for maximum customer involvement and engagement at every level that no operator can afford to miss.  Who do you think is making the most of their community?

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Posted in below-the-line, brand, brand character, brand development, Brand Discovery, Brand equity, Brand Model, Brand promise, branding, brands, brandships, business development, communications, CRM, customer, customer service, customers, difference, experiential, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, ideas, innovation, integrated marketing, integration, internal marketing, management, marketing, phil darby, restaurant marketing, Retail, Social marketing, Social networking, The Full Effect Company, Uncategorized

Where have all the catch phrases gone?

Posted on Thursday 22 April 2010 | Leave a comment

In my previous post I highlighted the value of a catch phrase like Tom Dickson’s “Will it blend” and mentioned one from way back “Nice one Cyril” that came to me as I was writing.  However, it strikes me that most people in agencies these days aren’t old enough to remember that catch phrases like this were the social networking of the pre-Face-Book era.

“Nice one Cyril” was carried as a song and released as a record (remember those?) but there were many more, like Murray Mint’s “Too-good-to-hurry mint” and Do-It-All’s “How do Do-It-All do it?” that were immortalised as jingles.  You really knew you had a hit on your hands when the popular press plagiarised them in their headlines, but there were many that worked without being turned into songs.  You just heard people use them in conversation.

How many can you think of?

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Posted in below-the-line, brand, brand character, Brand promise, branding, brands, creativity, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, ideas, phil darby, Social marketing, Social networking, the big idea, The Full Effect Company, TV commercial

The Big Idea – but, will it blend?

Posted on Thursday 22 April 2010 | Leave a comment

Folks are used to me banging on about how essential  “the big idea” is in marketing today, but genuinely big ideas are still a rarity.  There are loads of businesses and agencies that think their’s are humongous, but that’s usually only because their sense of proportion has deserted them.

I guess you have to have a nose for these things?  For example, Tom Dickson sells high-powered blenders.  He’s not Microsoft by any means, but he has created a campaign based on an idea that has taken off, big time.  I mean, if your USP is “power” what better way to drive this home than to take on challenges.  And that’s exactly what he has done, filming each challenge and posting it on You-Tube, then building a social networking campaign around it that has taken the imagination of folks all over America.

Of course, a big slice of his audience are youths, but that’s OK, because apparently evidence is revealing that they share this content with parents, if not by showing them the films, certainly by dragging them to see the challenges reproduced (on a less dramatic scale) in their local stores.  Yes, while this is a campaign that wouldn’t have been possible without social networking, it’s real beauty for me is that way it is integrated.  The films tie-in with the in-store demos and the advertising and the point-of-sale material and more.  The contribution this is making to his brand character, the reinforcement of his “brand promise” and the new “Brandships” he is acquiring as a result are priceless and the “will it blend” catch phrase is rapidly becoming the kind of equity that we Brits haven’t heard since “Nice one Cyril!”.

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Posted in advertising, below-the-line, Big Idea, brand, brand character, Brand equity, Brand promise, branding, brands, brandships, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, ideas, ideation, integrated marketing, integration, marketing, phil darby, promise, Social marketing, Social networking, the big idea, The Full Effect Company

2010, Year of the geek?

Posted on Thursday 24 December 2009 | Leave a comment

Its customary at this time of year for folks to publish predictions, so, not to be left out here are mine.

The fundamental changes that have come about in everybody’s lives in the last year and which continue to some extent, have demanded a new approach to marketing – “New Model Marketing” – and for a few years now I have been just one of many people propagating four mutually-dependant ideas that are at the heart of this new Paradigm.

  1. While short term benefits can be gained by a tactical approach, the evidence proves that sustainable growth and long-term success is dependent upon a strong brand community.
  2. We’ve focussed for too long on making promises to consumers through beautifully-crafted, compelling marketing communications, but all too often organisations have failed to deliver and customers have been disappointed.  Its time to walk the talk and deliver those promises.
  3. Marketing is the process of matching an organisation’s resources to customer needs. That means its involved in everything an organisation does at every level. Marketing is not a separate department and it isn’t communications (although communications are involved)
  4. Efficient businesses are successful businesses.  With the performance bar forever rising and every organisation looking to reduce its costs, the only hope an organisation has to gain ground is to achieve more with its investment.  That means eliminating inconsistency at every level and ensuring that every element of a business works together to achieve synergy.  That’s “integrated marketing”.

Insights and new kinds  of data management and analysis are essential if we are to achieve the necessary levels of efficiency and new ways of communicating with members of our brand community – that’s employees, investors and partners as well as customers – will be essential to the development of these relationships and the growth of any business.  I have always included IT people in my Full Effect project teams, but until recently we have been struggling like everyone else with Heath Robinson adaptations of tools designed for accounting purposes.  Now, at last there are early signs that the IT guys are on-board and applying their skills to the kind of solutions we need.

My predictions for 2010 are:

1 – 2010 will herald the arrival of the first of a new generation of data management tools that will really make a difference.  Its not that the nerds have been slow to do their job, but that marketers failed to get their brief in on time and the direction that the treadmill has taken ever since was dictated by the bean-counters who beat us to the draw.  However, the computer guys have hung around their new marketing mates for long enough now, the penny has dropped, they’re on the job and the potential of the great hardware that we have been developing in recent years will finally be realised with the emergence of a new kind of software that will bring us closer to the reality of delivering unique and compelling messages to individual customers rather than bludgeoning (and frequently pissing-off) broad segments.

I’m not one of those people who believes that there are aspects of marketing that cannot be measured.  I’m looking for a return on every dime my clients invest, which means I don’t get a lot of Xmas cards from the old PR school that seems to me to exist in a kind of mystical, non-accountable fug. This year I’m counting on the arrival of tools that will enable me and other marketers to more clearly understand the influence of every communications tool in our integrated strategies.

2 – This year we’ll see someone new step in and show us what “new media” is really all about. I despair at the failure of traditional media to respond to the opportunities (yes I did say opportunities!) presented by the arrival of on-line.  The paid for v. free debate continues, but we are still at the starting blocks as far as either option is concerned.  Steve Davies’ Skiddmark looks like a promising model, but there’s more out there and the race is on.  Hold on to your hats!

3 – Someone is about to get their act together and deliver a real user-driven experience that combines attractive programming, quality production and quality delivery. I have been very disappointed recently by a few mobile content providers.  Perform Group look as though they might be getting there, but where are the others?.  Let’s see who turns up for the party.

4 – Social networking will come into its own with the first of a new generation of communities driven by intuitive computing that more closely reflects the kind of judgements we all make about the people we mix with – another step closer to the deep and meaningful “Brandships” that have been at the heart of Full Effect Marketing for years.  I  don’t belive that FaceBook is a panacea.  I’m all for social networking (Its what my Brand Discovery programme is all about), but there are millions of businesses for whom the current social networking venues and resources don’t add up to anything, but a distraction from the real game.  Web 2.0 is a blunt instrument, but if you aren’t already involved you’ll not be ready to make the transition to WEb 3.0 which is where the real benefits will emerge.

2010 – new levels of accountability, relevant media, the content we want and real understanding of our customers. – Bring it on!

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Posted in brand, Brand promise, branding, brands, brandships, communications, community, data, data analysis, efficiency, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, integrated marketing, integration, media, on-line, on-line publishing, phil darby, promise, publishing, Social marketing, Social networking, The Full Effect Company, Uncategorized, Web 2.0, Web 3.0