Like a lot of fans of the newspaper, I’ve been concerned to read many recent studies detailing the struggles experienced by many news organizations in the digital age. One great aspect of the digital channel is the ability to build, test, analyze and iterate in relatively short order. And as a recent article in The New York Observer (and many other blogs & periodicals) recently called out, there are several immediate opportunities a news organization may wish to pilot, particularly around leveraging social media technologies that embrace the important concept of active reader engagement, providing hyper-local content that is a platform of individual communities, and embracing new mobile solutions that deliver content in context to a person’s preferences and/or location. Maybe the secret sauce is the convergence of these three important ideas.

Conventional wisdom once stated that from an online perspective, “Information wants to be free”, but it is my view that it can also be monetized assuming it provides real, differentiated value that consumers care about. Below are a few ideas that could be pertinent to news organizations:

In Web design, convenience and simplicity of user experience rules the day

–         Personalization and local relevance is key to staying top of mind (niche sites – SAHM, Teens)

–         Customizable homepages pertaining to personal preferences/data exchange

If national and int’l news is being commoditized, hyper-local is still the dominion of local newspapers

–         Help me know whatever it takes to live here (Source: Newspaper Next 2.0)

Provide better integration with print by understanding cross channel behavior

–         Online comments or guest  community bloggers published in the print edition

Master long and short form journalism

–         Micro blogging tools like Twitter especially important to deliver real-time updates

–         What are my friends reading? What is my favorite reporter doing right now?

Destination sites and distributed content equally important – target your readers where they live online

–         Atomization of content via RSS feeds, syndication, widgets, mobile apps

Layer in social, mobile and utility that helps readers and advertisers

–         Apps that connect me with other likeminded people in my community, help me find things to do,  help me to better know my community, help me find a job/a used car/a date (Nike + model)

–         Explore new emerging consumer platforms such as the iPhone = new advertising platform

–         GPS aware devices can find the restaurant review of my paper; provide coupon  to local coffee shop or directions to the nearest happy hour

–         Others: Early Edition iPhone app; podcasts of important articles; video reporting

Respect the “wisdom of the crowds”

–         Dell IdeaStorm and implications for journalism – what would you like us to report about?

Best content wins

–         Embrace the concept of citizen journalism and allow (enforce) community collaboration

–         Deliver content that can’t be found elsewhere; syndicated + UGC + original

Utility companies are even getting on board as some are experimenting with energy monitoring tools for their customers. What, besides iPhone applications, will the other extensions of this strategy look like?

This quote says it all and is one of the main reasons I got into interactive marketing in the first place.

“We want to find a way to enhance the experience and services, rather than looking for a way to interrupt people from getting to where they want to go,” said Stefan Olander, global director for brand connections at Nike. “How can we provide a service that the consumer goes, ‘Wow, you really made this easier for me’?”  Full article at New York Times.

With many branded dot com destination sites where there is no real transactional, customer service, CRM or community orientation, the greatest way to cultivate new customer connections involves understanding the organic online behaviors of your audience, the platforms they gravitate to, and their content preferences, and distribute quick bursts of branded experiences across an array of those digital channels they already use or are actively seeking out.

Today, with so many compelling online destinations, all roads need not lead to a branded website. Graphic courtesy of Keith Weaver.

“It was homecoming season and her daughter Mary was going to go to homecoming for the first time. What fascinated this mother was that her daughter’s approach to shopping was completely different than her own.

Using Google and a variety of online shopping sites, Mary researched dresses online, getting a sense for what styles she liked and reading information about what was considered stylish that year. Next, Mary and her friends went to the local department store as a small group, toting along their digital cameras (even though they’re banned). They tried on the dresses, taking pictures of each other in the ones that fit. Upon returning home, Mary uploaded the photos to her Facebook and asked her broader group of friends to comment on which they liked the best. Based on this feedback, she decided which dress to purchase, but didn’t tell anyone because she wanted her choice to be a surprise. Rather than returning to the store, Mary purchased the same dress online at a cheaper price based on the information on the tag that she had written down when she initially saw the dress. She went for the cheaper option because her mother had given her a set budget for homecoming shopping; this allowed her to spend the rest on accessories.

Mary’s mother was completely flabbergasted by the way in which her daughter moved seamlessly between the digital and physical worlds to consume clothing. More confusing to this mother, a professional in retail, was the way in which her daughter viewed her steps as completely natural.”

http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/node/100

“Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.”
- Alan Kay, an American computer scientist known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design.

Key message – “New” advances to the older generation, are commonplace and ubiquitous to youth. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Kay 

A Few Youth Marketing Themes: 

• Always-on generation. Move seamlessly between online & offline worlds.

• Everything on-demand. Example – child hears song on car radio and asks you to “play it again, mom!”

• DVRs, satellite radio, web = time-shifted viewing (and the end of prime time).

• “Lifecaching” or sharing experiences with personal networks, oftentimes the second it happens, via blogs, phones and social networks.

• Creativity is a status symbol – learn to type and design on computer as early as grammar school (I learned to type in high school).

• Online oxygen – ubiquitous connectivity, free Wi-Fi, no off button.

• First generation to have grown up with the Internet and mobile phones.

• Interactivity is part of their DNA/personal identity and dexterity with keypads, games, interfaces is an important status symbol.

• Starting to have MySpace and Facebook fatigue versus special interest networks like Bebo. Crave exclusivity and differentiation.

• Inner circle brands – limited number of brands allowed into a person’s inner circle. Brand channels and extensions are good ideas, but need to deliver real value.

Digital Activities of Young Women

Someone mentioned the concept of “friendship marketing” to me recently. At first glance, it seemed pretty obvious, but when you consider many consumers distrust marketing and consider it anything but friendly, it’s a compelling concept. Imagine consumers as friends, think friendshare (already coined by the Marriott Vacation Club) rather than share of mind or wallet.

In this age of diminishing attention spans where consumers have the unprecedented ability to tune out marketing and even market around brands, friendship marketing seems almost like the price of entry. As the once linear sales funnel ceases to exist and at a time where people increasingly takes cues from their personal and extended peer networks, a brand’s inability to listen to  or connect with consumers has potentially grievous consequences. 

Perhaps the concept of friendship can be used as a metaphor to build a better loyalty marketing mousetrap. First, it assumes being hands-on and acutely aware of what makes your friends tick, understands context and is personally relevant. Friends had better listen. Friends treat each other with respect and apply the golden rule or good neighbor policy. Friends have shared interests and appreciate the unique set of values their friends bring to the table. People today are so busy one could even say friendship, along with time, are the scarcest commodities of all. 

Next, we should consider this concept in relation to the fatigue many consumers are having with traditional loyalty programs. Many loyalty programs today fail on the soft-benefits side of the value proposition and best customers do not associate participation with special privileges. Points and other reward type of programs, unless it translates into something tangible like free air tickets or first class upgrades, mostly engender loyalty to points, not necessarily to the host. Soft benefits, in contrast, are friendlier treatments that recognize my investment, tenure, time, and interests and will forge stronger emotional connections, especially within passionate or high-involvement categories. These programs make me feel appreciated and exclusive, allow me be the first to trial or know, hook me up with exclusive events in my community, or connect me with other likeminds.

Trendwatching coined the phrase transumers, or “customers driven by experiences instead of the ‘fixed’, by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom, who increasingly live a live a transient lifestyle … “

A more modern approach to loyalty marketing would overlay hard and soft benefits and combine that with enabling experiences, when emboldened by technology and supported by demographic and attitudinal information and transactional data, would identify, and truly reward, a brand’s best customers. It would gold plate best customers, recognize their voice and communicate with a frequency and through a channel of their choosing.

Imagine if best customers could receive applications or utilities that not only forge stronger connections to the brand, but also save time and make their lives easier! What do you find most scarce today? For me it would be experiences which help me get organized and de-clutter my life. I want to be more eco-friendly but don’t know how to get started – help me. Provide me with a unique experience I can share with family and friends (or the platform to communicate it afterwards). Reward me with exclusive events that fuel my personal passion or hobby. In a B2B context, I’d really appreciate a premium level of customer support and a dedicated AE at my fingertips. If you help me get things done it takes the onus off me from collecting points or applying for rewards and saves me more time that I can apply to rewarding experiences.

A few good examples …

Exclusive, premium connections:  American Express’s Membership Rewards – exclusive access to a private collection of rewards from premium brands. 

Recognizing my voice: Nokia Nseries World 24h application. Beautiful incorporation of consumer experiences with a very tactile, passionate product that enables sharing of gaming, video, and music interests as well as photography.

“Best of the Best” VIP club: Windows Mobile’s Mobius group and Sony Playstation Gamer advisory panel.  Invitation only private clubs where “influentials” within a particular ecosystem take part as an exclusive product advisory committee helping review next generation offerings while promoting key announcements via their personal communities.

Points, Web 2.0 style: Converse Japan. Provide points based not on how many shoes purchased, but rather how vociferously people promoted the brand in their personal communities, receiving points which then could be redeemed later for products. Very Web 2.0 type of approach to points.

In sum, there is probably an example somewhere where a company is adroitly combining hard and soft benefits with something more experiential. If you know of a good example, please provide a comment as I’d love to know.

Loyalty friendshare is not only a competition between Delta and American Airlines, but between all my travel brands and every other product/service that nets a point, reward or rebate. Points are OK, but I’d rather redeem them for a once-in-a-lifetime experience I can share with my family. Something which I can capture photos of via my Nokia handset and publish them on my Flickr account and something that will make my daughters think I’m the best dad in the world. Now, that’s something tangible.

Originally published on iMedia Connection on January 9, 2008

The marketing landscape has indelibly changed. If you’re reading this article you probably buy into the following statement – the fragmentation of media outlets and the proliferation of emerging technologies has forever changed the way consumers interact with the marketplace.

It’s easy for digital marketing professionals to trumpet the latest Forrester or eMarketer report on the shift in marketing spend towards digital, but every so often a mainstream media outlet picks up the scent and inspires a closer inspection. Time Magazine nominated “You” and the user-generated revolution as its 2006 Person of the Year. A  July 2004 Business Week article entitled “The Vanishing Mass Market” had a chilling effect, outlining the fragmentation of media (five TV channels per home in 1960 versus over 80 today), the proliferation of the web, and emerging technologies such as DVRs that have created a new generation of on-demand consumers increasingly in charge of the marketing message and now empowered to tune you out, or market around you.

Assuming you buy into these macro trends, what’s the average marketer to do about this?

Develop personas
Due to this generation of on-demand consumers, it is more important than ever to be customer-centric (we really mean it this time) and to put the target audience front and center. We need to think like anthropologists and analyze what makes our customers tick, and what ticks them off.

Understand where your customers live online 
Part of understanding what makes customers tick is understanding where they already live online. Moving into 2008, it will be increasingly important to not interrupt our customer’s natural inclinations and habits, but rather to build contextual relevance around value-added content and services that enhance their online experiences. Rather than driving traffic to a destination that may not be top-of-mind, we should fish where the fish are. Entities such as YouTube or Facebook provide an open platform to create a compelling brand channel. Some marketing stalwarts have already gotten on board.

A recent NY Times article outlined Nike’s shift towards services. Stefan Olander, global director for brand connections at Nike, explained, “Nike executives say that much of the company’s future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions. We want to find a way to enhance the experience and services, rather than looking for a way to interrupt people from getting to where they want to go. How can we provide a service that the consumer goes, ‘Wow, you really made this easier for me’?”

They’re already discussing your brand — join in, or at least listen
Online conversations about brands are unchecked, unfiltered and outside the control of marketers. One only has to Google or use Technorati to get a quick reality check on discussions involving your brand. Brand monitoring services exist that allow marketers to “take the pulse” of what’s being said, the tone and sentiment of the conversation and the nodes of influence in their particular ecosystem to better understand potential media partners. At a minimum, active listening is a great primary research tool that will inform search and word of mouth strategies. Some tools actually allow you to take part in the conversation and begin a dialogue with your customers.

Develop marketing programs that build holistic customer journeys
As we all know, integrated communications that share a unified message drive brand behaviors. It is also critical that we think holistically about the multi-channel world customers live in and the myriad of managed and unmanaged touchpoints they leverage when engaging with your brand. The key component in integrated marketing success will emphasize how various communications synch with one another and help to move a customer through the lifecycle.

Develop stronger hooks
Stronger customer relationships and engagement are the result of quality loyalty marketing programs, but the day is quickly approaching where we will need to incentivize customers with more than an email newsletter. Email fatigue is starting to set in, not to mention the fact that Millennials consider email as their parents’ communication tool. We crave stronger bonds with customers and the permission to remarket to them, and we need to up the ante in terms of what we give in order to receive that valuable profile data.

Enable customer dialogue and storytelling
The proliferation of blogs, online video and other social media technologies prove the case that people are more comfortable with online media and are natural born storytellers, and that an experience shared is oftentimes more valuable that the experience itself. Some brands (Nike Plus, Nokia Nseries) have created experiential platforms that are architected to put customer experiences and storytelling front and center, where the product plays a supporting role. This idea of brand as enabler, of experiences that synchronize with brand pillars, will become a stronger proposition for brand marketers in 2008.

Innovate, experiment and always measure
Most marketers are at least cautiously optimistic about digital marketing due to the inherent measurability of the channel. Data-centric marketing communications, where communications programs are governed by customer profile data, onsite behavior and an innate understanding of which communications drive behavior, will increasingly become the price of entry in coming years. Multi-channel analytics that provide unparalleled insight into marketing ROI and inform optimization will become the most sought after marketing skill set. And the ability to combine the classic of brand planning based on customer insights with data from stronger analytics will create stronger integrated marketing strategies.

Originally published on iMedia Connection on August 14, 2006

The challenge
When Lexus required direct communications to support the relaunch of their flagship vehicle — the LS 460 — they challenged the agency to introduce some invigorated thinking into the communications plan. Based on what we outlined as the key desires and attributes of the target customer, we introduced the concept of a personalized landing page (PURL) as part of an integrated direct communications program. From early summer until the vehicle’s launch in October, all roads in the campaign led to a personalized page offering an exclusive online experience. Take a look here for an overview of the LS 460 personal experience.

We believed the PURL would be a strong compliment to the traditional car pre-launch microsite. In addition to standard microsite content, PURL viewers can engage in authentic, behind-the-scenes content via customer testimonials, product specialist videos and exclusive video from various events.

The PURL concept dovetailed with Lexus’ brand strategy and with it’s key customer insight and profile of their expected needs– recognizing who they are, making them feel valued, making their viewing experience easy and providing them with content they couldn’t find anywhere else.

The overarching objective was to develop a landing page that wasn’t a one hit wonder but rather encouraged customers to revisit via an easy-to-remember URL and communication triggers that signified updates while also providing links to timely blogs and third-party party articles. It was also our expectation that the PURL project would be discussed in relevant Lexus blogs and forums, generating additional traffic through word of mouth.

Our solution
The question we tried to answer with this campaign was, “how do you introduce an exclusive online experience for a vehicle that is the ‘height of evolution’ and a technological marvel that, according to some sources, has ‘more technology features than any other vehicle offered for sale in the North American market’?”

We needed to evolve the standards for a landing page; something that acted as more than a funnel to another area of the main site– a targeted, engaging page that would dramatically increase conversion rates.

Agency.com partnered with us to create an elegant user interface that expanded the definition of a landing page into a single-state / multi-view dimension that balanced personalized communication, an exclusive online experience and a memorable presentation of design, performance and luxury attributes from a trusted source. Phase one of the project led with customer testimonials from the NY Auto Show and an “Enthusiast Event” in Torrance, California, offering a novel way to shift the marketing lens off the brand and onto the end user. The page featured video content, but also served up product specs, photography and third-party content within a single, easy-to-use interface.

Results and next steps
While our expectations were relatively modest going in, to date the program has achieved a response rate of two times our plan of individuals logging onto their personal pages. We believe we’ve introduced a relatively inexpensive way to create content that presents the Lexus brand in a new light.

Subsequent phases of the project will offer more detail by allowing those most in the know — Lexus product specialists — to showcase the company’s design philosophy and provide detailed insight into car features and functionality.

No matter which side of the user-generated content fence you stand on, it’s our belief that programs like this can serve to finally explain how shifts in consumer media consumption and internet fluency influence the traditional marketing lens. By continuing to cede control of the marketing experience to the end user, we hope to enable engagement with the brand at a deeper level than possible before. We also believe this type of program can be expanded to account for the post-purchase lifecycle, empowering peer-to-peer community and viral functionality and supporting post-purchase communications via rewards and service reminders.

Watching Olympic snowboarding is somewhat analogous to the changing priorities and new technologies shaking up the marketing industry. One only has to watch the performances and subsequent interviews with the U.S. Olympic snowboarding team to understand this is new school, a generation occupying a different mindspace, not to mention a unique vernacular and cadence in their communications.

Lindsey Jacobellis, silver medalist, was caught showboating towards the end of the Snowboard Cross final, ultimately costing her the gold medal. Watching Lindsey catch air was an exhilarating experience but also made me feel nostalgic. Michael Jordan was flamboyant but always made sure he finished the play, whereas Lindsey is a 20-year-old more used to freestyling on her own terms. “Snowboarding is fun,” she said. “I was ahead. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd. I messed up. Oh well, it happens.”

It made me wonder: How would I market to someone like Lindsey or a younger audience increasingly on-demand and very much in control of the marketing conversation? This younger demographic consumes media differently than their predecessors, are early adopters of technology, are known to be cynical towards traditional marketing and could even be considered brand disloyal. One might consider the approach of marketing to them by not marketing to them but rather by providing the tools and platforms necessary to tell their stories, hopefully articulating a positive brand experience in the retelling of their tales. These ironic, commericial/anti-commerical approaches have been tried before, but this approach is not marketing by wink or gimmick, but rather an authentic technique where you cede control to the consumer.

Enter life caching

We consultants hear a lot about emerging media ideas and the plethora of exciting new marketing opportunities available to us. Far too often, however, it feels that we rush to recommendations without much thought to a unifying idea, a clear value exchange, or recontact strategy beyond the immediate message.

Rather than pitching podcasting as the emerging marketing tactic du jour, I was in search of such a unifying principle, when I came across an article on trendwatching.com entitled “Life Caching,” a concept I found to be an incredibly pertinent idea to connect with today’s upwardly mobile younger consumer. Taking advantage of camera phones and other new technologies, cheap storage and a willingness to tell their stories, smart marketers could market to the new class of technology optimists by enabling storytelling (via blogs, communities, podcasts, camera phones), on a multitude of platforms (SMS, web, email, retail environments, IM, video games) in the understanding that the end result is a referral buzz about the brand. The end goal is to foster user-generated content and community where “sharing an experience may become more valuable than the actual experience itself.”

Current applications of life caching are well represented in social networking sites such as MySpace or Flickr and services like Nokia Lifeblog. The second generation of life caching could possibly embrace advances such as Amazon.com’s collaborative filtering, wikis and the implications of mashup/remix culture by enabling the collective intelligence or opinions of the network to help inform intelligent communications.

I recently read a report about how new Helio handsets will enable users to tag postings with geocodes that are activated when they reach a specific location. At a concert, for example, the user would have access to photos and blogs of subscribers who’ve visited the concert hall or seen a particular band before. This could be considered the next generation of life caching platforms– tapping into the collective memories or experience of the masses.

The value exchange: Give something to get something

How do marketers tap into these cultural trends and safely create a platform for personal storytelling through digital channels? Is caching one’s life a good enough value proposition?

Marketers want consumer data and permission to create an ongoing dialogue with the end user. In order to capture that data, it’s not enough to simply incentivize with new content, sneak peaks, exclusive offers, premium customer service, or sweeps and giveaways. The ultimate value exchange for the end user is to respect his time enough to deliver only messaging that is relevant and in context of his personal goals.

Thus, the new value exchange:

• Shifts focus from brand-centric to customer-centric emphasis by communicating relevance and value of brand to consumer
• Creates a 1:1 dialogue portal to gain key segment behavioral and attitudinal data and build deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers.

The new dynamic

As more and more customer touchpoints become digital they can also become direct-response enabled and tailored to the individual. In the user-initiated marketing landscape, where the end user chooses the depth and duration of the marketing experience, we need customer profile data to deliver the right message to the right customer, a process exacerbated by a multitude of new touchpoints. Forrester refers to this as Left Brain Marketing or a “data-driven planning approach that allocates resources based on a holistic picture of the customer across all points in the lifecycle.”

Data-centric communications by way of profile information, preferences data, subscription management and behavioral data surrounded by business rules that control communications across multiple channels is the next wave, moving us from undifferentiated, static experiences to dynamic, personalized narratives.

Such a methodology grounded in marketing memory, behavioral insights and dynamically rendered content can be a winning formula for both consumer and marketer.

What might this data-centric marketing narrative look like in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics? Lindsey crosses the finish line first and (later) uses her Helio phone to capture personal video of the gold medal experience. She immediately shares it with her peer network on MySpace which has filled out extensive profile data that trigger a text message offer to purchase a video of the gold medal race, including behind-the-scenes commentary and extras reported by Lindsey herself. Lindsey’s MySpace page is also updated with other entries by people who’ve experienced that course before, and the content is available to you via the web, email, handset, or other channel of your choosing.