What we're getting into.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know what’s going on with Coco, aka Conan O’Brien. Unceremoniously canned from his dream gig on The Tonight Show, his exit contract stipulated that he wasn’t allowed to be back on the airwaves until September. The late-night-talk-show-hosting equivalent of a non-compete clause.

Through it all, Coco [how'd he get that name anyway?] has been completely up-front about it. Always the first to make fun of himself ["I'm freakishly tall!"], his tweets and sound bytes have kept him relevant and entertaining while managing to deflect snide comments to the network that done him so wrong [NBC].

I suppose he had no choice. It’s not like he could deny what happened to him in front of millions of people, or pretend it wasn’t embarrassing. Besides, we wouldn’t want it any other way. Coco is a case study in how to mine comedy from what was probably a personal tragedy.

Since he’s forbidden from the airwaves for a few months yet, he just launched a national tour with the catchy name "The Not Allowed to Be Funny on Television Until September Tour." Gathering from the reviews, the premiere in Oregon was a smash.

I’m not surprised. One of the pillars of the Coco brand has always been self-deprecation. It’s a credit that he has stayed true to it. I hope, and expect, that when his newly-announced TBS talk show debuts in the fall, his commitment to his Brand Essence and the fact that he knows his audience so well, will pay off.

Go, Coco!

If I were to tell you that “sharing” was met with fear, confusion, consternation and a scant level of curiosity would that sound familiar? Well, then we share the same experience. Change management is not about cheerleading; at least not solely about cheerleading, so we’ve learned. Everyone said it was a GREAT idea that we start eating our own dog food. Everyone agreed that our value proposition, applauded by our inner circle of clients, employees, and friends, would be embraced by a broader community if we simply got the message into the market. Everyone agreed that we were actually living “sharing” at the client level, enabling our clients’ customers to “feel, learn, do or be.” And everyone agreed that “sharing” was a top-three priority for the organization.

But that’s where everyone stopped agreeing.

So we’re now living another maxim of the organization: slow down to get there faster. We have to slow down to add structure, clarity, directives, and support to our “sharing” program. The Client Services team is creating IP and sharing it through channels like Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, Flickr and such. We’re also joining communities where our clients live and learn.  We’ve identified brand advocates (creators and critics) and brand loyalists (collectors, joiners, and spectators). For the most part we’re learning and listening, all being loyalists, because we really need to understand the environment before we add a voice. Hopefully, as everyone gains confidence over the next few weeks we’ll transition to advocates. Interesting discovery was that “sharing” becomes a personality thing – some will become great advocates and some will play another role as loyalists. Take our technology clients: some folks within the organization advocate innovation, killer apps, and market trends. Others deal with programmer blogs and customer service. Both vital but very different.

The rest of the organization is just getting their feet wet. They need structure first. We’re providing the tools and some education. For now they are spectators and that’s fine. Tools are hugely important because jumping on board is hugely intimidating. Sarah Hartshorn at Social Media Today provided solid advice about tools (most of us are using Tweet Deck: http://bit.ly/9JTYGD). Once the structure is in place we’re going to provide the space for them to explore, get comfortable, and grow. Then we’ll figure out the editorial calendar. For now it’s just about comfort… for everyone.

More soon.

Recently, the Luxury Marketing Council asked me to share some thoughts about creating great brand experiences. I was eager to oblige. Over years of working with clients, helping them stand out with their authentic voice, certain tenants for creating great experiences have bubbled up. Here is what we have come to learn at Groove 11 as the 11 essentials for creating great experiences.  

1. Lore

Lore is your story. Think about it. Everyone loves to hear to great story. Your story and how you tell is critical to attracting folks to you. Crafting a great lore is all about knowing where you came from, the stories of the people behind your brand and sharing your essence. This means going beyond the facts. It is not about features and benefits. It is about creating magic – magic starts with a story. It’s a story that is distinct. That no one else can own. Know your story. Tell your story. Take a look at Title Nine and Coach and see how great these brands are at creating great lore.

2. Romance

How many times have your heard it said, “Romance the product.” Well once you have a lore, romance is all about getting people to fall in love with you. If you are a destination for example, romance the experience that awaits your guests.  If you sell running shoes, how is the product going to make me feel? Romance means creating an emotional expectation. Romance creates the desire, desire creates anticipation and anticipation sets the stage for experience.

3. Discovery

Discovery is about letting your customers into the process on their terms. It is about literally letting them discover something on their own perhaps something new that they may have not known before. Discovery includes your customers in the process. In travel and destination marketing we hear this all the time – travelers want to discover something new and off the beaten path.  With any brand customers want to accept and explore as if they found it themselves. It only makes the experience richer. You can facilitate that process by leaving room for an authentic experience to unfold by letting discovery occur.

4. Inspiration

This is the part of the talk where I get down on my knees and I beg of you – please move me! Nothing is worse than mediocre marketing. And the problem with most marketing – is that it is simply bland, void of any inspiration. People: You can do so much better. Create an experience that truly inspires.  This can be done with any business or product, believe me. I once had a client in the refrigerated container business – we created inspiring marketing materials by hiring a fashion photographer to shoot containers in a ship yard. We could have bought stock photography but that would have been more of the same. How is your brand inspiring people to feel, learn, do, or be something? If not, why not?  Make it personal. Touch my spirit. Make me feel it. Move me. Inspire me.

5. Occasions

Create occasions for customers to enjoy and experience you – occasions they may not have otherwise considered, but for your suggestion. There are many current examples of marketers who created all new occasions and increased opportunities for brand engagement as a result. A few years ago, W Hotel created “Girls Night Out” Events in a promotion with the USA network and later HBO.  The hosted evenings included a cocktail party, show viewings, manicures, makeup applications, gift bags with host products. Creating these occasions allowed the brand to reach a whole new group of locals and create word of mouth and buzz among women.  Think about suggesting occasions to your community.

6. Know thy audience

Knowing your audience is SUCH an important marketing imperative that it should be considered in the 10 commandments of marketing. How can you begin to create an experience that will resonate unless you really know what makes them tick? Ask yourself what you know about audience.  Do you know who they are? Do you know where they are? What do they care about? What do they know about you? It is only by really knowing audience that you can craft marketing that is relevant and that reaches them through the clutter.

7. Make it personal

When talking about creating great experiences, consider that experiences are intrinsically personal – driven by emotion, logic, vision, perspective, common sense. Making the experience personal, taps into these basic human emotions to create something unforgettable. It is these personal experiences that drive and enable lasting relationships. From the little touches – the handwritten thank you card, the gift bag, remembering my name and what I like to drink to allowing a rewards program or guest services based on my preferences. Make it personal and you have me for life.

8. Paint a picture

A picture paints a thousand words. Throughout your marketing, paint a picture through words, visual and demonstrations of an experience they can see themselves in. Get them to imagination themselves interacting with you. Show them how it can happen. Disney for example has a current campaign featuring parents going online and realizing they can afford to make their dream family vacation happen for their entire family. The commercial paints a picture of how you too can make it happen. Help them see themselves there and facilitate the next step in the process.

9. Reach out to segments

Segment marketing all about leveraging  powerful niches within the general market. Such groups include Women, LGBT, Hispanic, you get the idea.  Kimpton Hotels has successfully supplemented the success of its “In Touch” loyalty rewards program by running specials for its LGBT customers. This segment contributes multiple millions of  dollars a year in extra revenue to Kimpton nationwide. Segment marketing – by gender, culture, ethnicity and more – can create great loyalty, and lift Think about where the opportunities in the market exist and what segments match the persona of your brand.

10. Share it

Once you have a story, get it out there, evangelize it. Share your story and get others sharing it with you. Design a sharing strategy – whether it is word of mouth or social media leveraging happy customers and getting them to share their experiences about YOU. It is demonstrated that referrals and word of mouth actually has much more impact and believability than other forms of marketing. Incent your customers to share their stories.

11. Measure it 

And finally we have the 11^th tenant of creating great experiences, measurement. So many times meaningful measurement is neglected. And when the CFO asks for real ROI marketers are left with anecdotal evidence.  You can benchmark at the outset of campaigns and you should design measurements – however simplified into the program. One of the most basic things to do is to ask and record  how people are finding out about you. Ask questions after sale like “How are doing? What’s working? What’s not working? Why or why not? Would you share your experience with others? How is this experience better/worse than others?” Having measurement in place is key to adjusting strategies and refining again and again. This can be for a year over year campaign or optimizing on the fly. Measurement creates efficiency and helps hone and prove marketing success. And it improves the discipline of instinctual marketers.

Good conversation is hard. Dialogue, by definition, is a process of giving and receiving. In the old-media world of monologue communication, brands didn’t see the need to spend much time on the listening end of the conversation. It was one-way tell people stuff. Feedback was what an angry customer gave you, if they could find your customer service number. Or took the time to write you a letter. It was easy to ignore that angry (and clearly misguided) costumer, and turn your attention to acquiring a new customer, simply turn up the volume on the monologue tell people stuff side.

Today, everyone is a publisher. Finding your customer service number is not important. As a matter a fact, it doesn’t matter. Every customer is equipped with a bullhorn and a network of folks who listen and likely value what they say. Your brand better as well. Your brand must be good at the “Art of Conversation.” Particularly the part about listening and receiving feedback, you’re going to get it, so you better be in a dialogue.

How do you do that? You accept that your brand is co-owned by the folks who use it (this is the new reality). By doing so, you bring your customers into the fold of your organization. They are an extension, and a very important on at that. Your culture must change to be in tune with your customer like never before. You treat your customers with respect, it’s a different respect than in the past, you treat them with peer-to-peer respect. You listen more than tell. See, funny thing about customers (people), if they feel respected and listened to, they’re incredibly loyal. Loyalty leads to advocacy, and that is where marketing thrives. Your customer will lead your brand into new customer’s hands, much more so if they feel kinship w/ your brand, ownership of your brand.

At Groove 11, we have a passion for building brand relationships. All relationships are built on conversations, and good conversations, as a core element, have robust dialogue. You want your brand to be part of a dialogue that moves product. That begins by listening. Please listen to your customers actively and often. Your brand and bottom line will thank you.

Mike McGinty and I went to Ad Tech last week to see what we could see. We spent 2.5 days immersed in all things digital at Moscone Center. As usual the rooms were cold, the food was soggy. But the gadgets were hot. For example there was a great twitter wall supplied by Dedo Inc. and a recharging station where you could drop off your phone. (LOVED THAT!)

But who cares? We went to see, and learn and be inspired. And at times we were.

The Volkswagen Real Racing Game  from Firemint is a free IPhone app that puts you in driver’s seat of a Special Edition GTI. It has all the bells and whistles of an integrated social campaign. Results can be tweeted, facebooked or you can rip a video of your race and post it to You Tube. It’s a phenomenon with 4 million + downloads world-wide. Better still, it drives those highly targeted 18-35 year old males to a take the keys. Integrating mapping into the application encourages players to test drive the real thing at their local showroom. They track everything.Test drives are up something like 56% as a direct result of the game. Not bad for an IPhone app.

Levi Strauss is doing something really cool with their multi-channel Go-Forth campaign. They are showing some deep pockets (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) in creativity and innovation.

Jaime Cohen-Szulc, chief marketing officer of Levi’s brand and senior vice president at Levi Strauss & Co, presented the case study. He talked a lot about how the convergence of technology and user experience is creating a new frontier for brands and consumers. (I ripped some of his quotes from Mobile Marketer. Their recorder was on, mine was not).

Jaime Cohen-Szulc reminded us that “Everybody has the sense that their business is going to change, but most people don’t know how.” 

He tied it to the rapid changes we are all experiencing by noting “Important trends that are driving change include faster product lifecycles and challenging macro-economics, as well as the increasingly complex marketing mix. The reason why the Internet and digital channels [such as mobile] are so important, is they touch the core of human values—the need to connect, the need to feel loved and the need to feel productive, which can be really difficult to do in real life.”

He captured the impact of both the Levi and the VW campaigns by telling us “If you enact changes for the people, they will carry your brand,” he said. “It’s about moving from loyalty to advocacy."

He underscored the power of this by saying “Brand loyalty is very passive, but brand advocacy is about being active, not passive.”

Over and over again this was reinforced by case studies. When we went to the expo floor, where we saw the technologies and platforms (architectures in Groove speak) needed to advance  these changes.

Our big take away: you have to give up control to gain advantage. This is a bit scary, but it is also extremely exciting. I don’t remember another time in history when innovation was so democratized. We are just a keystroke away from …

Rex Whismen recently wrote http://www.brandchannel.com/brand_speak.asp that universities must move away from Mad Men marketing/advertising and begin to teach branding. Branding that emphasizes building a sustainable brand based on values and a core mission. I agree. I feel uniquely suited to comment. At Groove 11 we work with clients to do just that; define the core essence of their brand and build sustainable relationships with their customers. In addition, I have the privilege of lecturing at San Francisco Bay Area universities on marketing and branding. In this role, I get an up-close look at how universities teach marketing and branding in the 21^st century. It’s not pretty.

Universities continue to emphasize awareness above all else and splashy (and expensive) 30-second spots. They’re preaching integrated marketing minus digital, and heavy on interruptive methods. Universities live in a “push” media world, when in fact it’s now a “pull” digital world. Creating consideration for a product or service is not nearly as important as it once was, due to the access we all have (via the web) to learn and comment on just about anything we desire. The consumer creates their own consideration set.

What matters now is different. It’s about your brand’s place in the world. It’s about the relationship your brand occupies in the consumer’s mind and life. It’s about the values your brand lives by. Transparency and word-of-mouth are not a nice-to-have, they are the new reality. In this world, what you do, how you act, and what you believe is more important than any feature set. Your brand’s #1 job is to build sustainable relationships that matter. You must be an experience brand. What does that mean?Here are two examples.

Nike + http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeos/p/nikeplus/en_US/

W Hotels http://www.brandchannel.com/features_webwatch.asp

Nike + added value to an important sports segment, runners. By becoming part of their everyday lives with something they didn’t even know they needed, Nike built brand loyalty. The brand elevated the entire experience of running. Once you buy in to Nike + and begin to track your stats and share them via the Nike-owned website w/ a community of runners, your brand loyalty is cemented.

W Hotels is not about filling rooms. It’s about giving their customers an experience. From the first touchpoint on the website, you know W Hotels is different. They’ve created an oasis. Their hotels have a distinct personality. The consumer knows what that personality is and is willing to pay a premium for it. They’re an experience brand.

Hopefully universities will begin to prepare students to create brands that add value and build sustainable relationships instead of splashy advertising. I’m doing my part.

Looking over my email box this week it seems I can save a ton of money, be better dressed and win a trip to DC. Not to mention learn 5 reasons why digital agencies will fail and download Turbo Tax.  Oh and I forgot, Jenny is out sick today and my boss wants a creative brief on his desk by 5:00. 

If my email box is anything like yours, it is a mash-up of my work, my interests, and my shopping history. The noise, if you will. As a marketer how do you cut through it? By creating a subject line that resonates. How do you know what resonates? By testing many subject lines and seeing what performs best.

This week the concept of subject line testing came up in a big way for one of my clients. They hosted a webinar aimed at the healthcare industry and although we had 175 people attend the live event the client felt the response was not as good as an event they did last year about this time. When we analyzed the outreach experience we quickly saw why.

Last year they partnered with a publisher to promote a webinar to the healthcare industry. This year, same publisher, same outreach. The "from" line was the same, a trusted source of this community. The topic was similar access to patient medical information via  Electronic Health Records (EHR).

The subject line used was:
Be Ready to Implement EHR – A Success Story From One of America’s Best Hospitals
The results….over 1500 clicks and 850 people registered.

This year the subject line was:
Learn to transform healthcare IT with XYZ (insert technology solution here)

This one drew half the number of clicks and only 25% of the registrations. What went wrong?

When you only have 50 characters and a few seconds to capture someone’s attention, it can be difficult to know: timing? Topic? Urgency? Or was it just the words we used?

What is interesting is the “Be Ready" subject line broke rule #1. By all standards it was too long, with 88 characters. You could argue that the hyphenation created the illusion of brevity and quickly demonstrated value. “Be Ready” set a tone of urgency as well. (Get more email best practices here)

In our second instance, we opened with “Learn,” I see "Learn" used a lot. Learn vs Be Ready would be an interesting test. Luckily we get another chance to test our subject lines as the archive of the webinar is now ready for promotion. I will let you know what we learn.