This has been a week of experiences for me.  ”Brand Experience” is going to be the marketing buzzword of the year.  And not without reason.  So, here’s been my week:

First, I received a copy of The Apple Experience by Carmine Gallo (McGraw-Hill)

It’s a good primer into how Apple found success in retail after other computer companies had failed.   If you’re an Apple fanatic, then most of the book will be warm comfortable ground that you’ve been through before.

And if you aren’t the kind of person [or company] who obsessively benchmarks Brand Experiences, this is a great shortcut.

But Apple isn’t the only experience there is.  In many ways I find the Apple experience to be more about the sheer visual beauty of the stores, products and space.   There’s less than meets the eye, in some sense.  Try TD Bank to see just how much the actual experience overshadows the design.  Start by walking your dog into the branch and see how you are treated.  Now, go ahead to a nearby Citi location and try the same thing.

One complaint I have about Apple and Apple Stores is the feeling of being in a walled-in garden.  It is hermetic.  There is a built-in subversion, a paradox at the heart of the Apple Store.  Explicitly Apple is all about unleashing the creativity of people like you and me.  Implicitly, encoded in the heart of Apple is a “look at me, admire me, love me” sensibility, an extreme narcissism.  At it’s core Apple believes more in its own creativity than in yours or mine.

Second, I found this on Engadget:

Samsung promised one more surprise — and what it gave us was a special retail strategy. The company will be opening Mobile Pin locations, or glass-housed pop-up stores, to help showcase its new flagship phone [Samsung Galaxy S III launched in London earlier today]

Samsung Mobile PIN exterior from Engadget

Samsung Mobile PIN interior from Engadget

 

What’s Past Is Prologue – or – Ad Copy By Shakespeare

This just in from  forbes.com as retold by Michael Margolis

Storytelling is a hot business trend for a reason. In the face of growing cynicism and distrust, stores are how people decide if they belong in your tribe…. The brand story is what allows your message to travel.

Every brand has a founding myth, an epic narrative that explains how it came to be in this world. It’s important because it explains why you do what you do. If you’re clear about the end product you’re trying to create, you can use the past to help tell the story of your future.

Does every brand really have a founding myth?  No, but they should.  It’s like a back-story for an attraction at Disney World.  You may not know it but you can certainly sense it.

As the Bard once said, “what’s past is prologue”

FORBES Back to the Future

Marketing Management Has Become Like An Elephant Riding A Bicycle – or – What Big Data Taught Me

Here is the presentation that Professor Don Sexton and I made to the BRITE conference a couple of weeks ago.  Don made sense of the data in the first half of the presentation and I followed on with the larger implications for marketing.

Yes, the Elephant on a Bicycle is how I summarize the state of marketing management today.  The framework for marketing is like a rickety bicycle, one that was built over 30 years ago.  When you pile social media, digital OOH, mobile, the convergence of online and offline the whole contraption becomes unwieldy.  The traditional marketing approach just wasn’t built for today’s world.

It’s time to stop trying to patch up the old model.  Let the past be the past.  And move on to adopt marketing techniques that are designed specifically for today’s world.

It was truly brave of the marketers at some companies like Coca Cola, McDonald’s, VISA, etc., to admit the traditional marketing model doesn’t get you very far anymore.  Coca Cola developed their strategic storytelling model, “Liquid and Linked”.  McDonald’s under CMO Larry Light broke new ground with Brand Journalism.

This presentation is merely the tip of the iceberg of insights to be discovered in the research.   You can download the first real report of the study that was co-authored by Don and David Rogers of the Center for Global Brand Leadership at briteconference.com or from the NYAMA’s website nyama.org

Sexton and Ringer Presentation of NYAMA BRITE Study

My Future Was BRITE

It was great fun to be at Columbia’s Center for Global Brand Leadership’s BRITE Conference yesterday and today.

Professor Don Sexton and David Rogers presented some of initial findings and implications from our new CMO Study on ROI in the Era of BIG DATA.  This was a joint study of the Center for Global Brand Leadership and the NYAMA.  The very generous sponsors of the study were the Greenbook and ResearchNow.  There were many other people involved in championing the idea of this study including Edwin Roman of ESPN/NYAMA, Rick Kendall, Debra Berliner and Christine Heye of the NYAMA; Sylvia Chu, Andrew Kyrejko and Michael Dudley of Verse Group; and Matt Quint and the incomparable Bernd Schmitt of Columbia.

If I had one message to give CMOs about the study it is: “You are not alone in your struggles to stuff digital marketing into traditional processes and methods.”

And there’s a good reason.

Big Data is a Big Headache for most marketers, revealing a fundamental Big Problem: The underlying foundation of marketing is rickety, fragile.  Piling more digital innovations on top of it reveals the problems inherent in the traditional positioning model of how marketing works.  In fact, marketing management has become like an elephant riding on a bicycle.

The good news is that there are newer approaches to marketing that are built for the digital world.  Until now, many of those breakthroughs in marketing have been created internally at corporations like Coca-Cola (liquid and linked), McDonald’s (Brand Journalism), P&G and others.  The principles of their approaches are available to anyone to adopt and adapt.  Principles such narrative — e.g. seeing your brand more like a hit Broadway Musical or attraction at Disney World rather than a 2 dimensional billboard.  Principles such as using powerful metaphors, co-creating meaning with customers and, yes, engaging with them on their terms.

In the coming weeks expect to see more of the data from the study so that you can make your own judgements.  The NYAMA will be holding a seminar to share the findings in greater depth than was possible at BRITE.  Stay tuned!

CMO ROI Social Media Metrics – or – Did I Say the Magic Word Yet?

We are now out of the field with the joint BRITE/NYAMA study of CMOs.  Over 200 corporate marketing decision makers have shared their views and perspectives on how they are managing and measuring digital and social media.   This study goes deep into the methods, metrics, ROI — even to the level of  how they are organized to take full advantage of social media.

As the old saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage to it.

World premiere is on March 5th at the BRITE conference here in NYC.

NYAMA members get a $100 discount on the conference.  You can get the discount code by emailing Tracy Crinion, tcrinion@nyama.org.

In April, date TBD, NYAMA will hold a follow-up event to go through the findings in more depth and allow more time for members to discuss the issues.  Stay tuned to nyama.org.

“New Survey Results: Marketing Measurement in a Time of Transition”
Prof. Don Sexton; Columbia Business School
Randall Ringer; President, NY American Marketing Association, and CEO Verse Group

Measuring the effect of marketing activities is, arguably, more important than ever. The Center on Global Brand Leadership and the NY-AMA are conducting a survey of over 200 senior marketers from leading companies in order to uncover current practices and attitudes concerning the development and use of effective marketing metrics. Results of this research will be released for the first time at BRITE ’12, providing key insights for attendees considering their own marketing metrics and best practices.

 

 

Get BRITE – Or – World Premier of Columbia U/NYAMA CMO Study

You are not alone…there are other corporate marketers facing the same dilemma of managing their communications across social media, mobile, online, tv, print.

Now you can learn from them.  What is working?  How do they measure ROI? How the hell do we make sense out of all that data?

Introducing the BRITE/NYAMA CMO Study.  The world premier will be at the BRITE conference on March 5th in New York City.  www.briteconference.com

Stay tuned for more details!

Brand China and Apple’s Image

My last post was about the image of China as a brand and as home to a number of Chinese brands.

Around the same time the New York Times was running a series of articles about the working conditions at some of the largest Chinese manufacturers — companies that are contracted to make products for Apple, Dell, HP, Nike and many other “American” brands.

Made-in-China has carried a stigma for a number of years because the country has been linked to many counterfeit and defective products.  These range from microchips to medicines — and have poisoned people and animals as well as destroyed computers, interrupted communications networks and caused other physical damage.

Now the spotlight is on working conditions in Chinese factories.   Moral outrage at sweatshops is part of American culture.  It made headlines when Wal-Mart locked the cleaning staff in overnight.  We get up in arms when chickens don’t have enough elbow room (or whatever is the chicken equivalent of elbows).  So it should be no surprise when the treatment of workers in China becomes a focal point.

Made-in-China is taking on the image of high tech sweatshops.

And that made-in-China label is very visibly, very publicly tarnishing Apple’s image.  A few days ago it was the NY Time’s big headlines on the human cost of iPads.  Before that it was a Times story on the iPhone.   The NY Times stories have been picked up and amplified across the media.  Here’s Bob Garfield writing in Adage.com.  Bob Garfield on the rot in Apple’s image

Will these revelations slow down the pace of Apple’s sales?  I doubt it.  But it will hurt Apple’s image in several important areas, particularly recruitment of the best and brightest and regulatory scrutiny.

This is an example of why reinventing the marketing model must include corporate image and corporate reputation.  Nike learned it the hard way and is now an exemplar.  The new reality in North America and Europe is that we want to know about the people and values of companies, not just the prices and products.

Chinese Brands and Brand China

Do the origins of a brand shape the perceptions of the brand?

Yes!  No!  A more accurate response might be, Maybe!  It all Depends!

This is a question that Chinese brands are facing every day now.  For more than a decade the rise of Chinese exports has captured the front pages and led to predictions that Chinese brand will soon breakthrough to become powerful global brands. Haier.  Lenovo.  Huwaei.

It hasn’t happened yet.  For some insights, here’s Columbia’s Professor Don Sexton discussing the state of Chinese brands:

Prof Don Sexton on Chinese Brands

Professor Don Sexton

Brand That Place – or – George Washington Slept Here

In today’s NY Post there is a swell piece about Brooklyn as a brand.  And, yes, that is me being quoted.

My first experience of branding a place was spending some of my cavity prone years in Morristown, NJ.  Everywhere you look there is a plaque about George Washington.  George Washington Slept Here (A Lot) is pretty much the town’s unofficial slogan.

Best of all in Morristown is Fort Nonsense.  Basically it is just a hill. The story is that George Washington had his men build fortifications, dig trenches and put up a guard house on the hill for the sole purpose of  keeping the soldiers busy during the winter months.  It was never used and soon reverted back to its natural state as a hill.   All that remains are plaques on the hill, telling its unique narrative.

Fort Nonsense is such a wonderful name and a wonderful example of how branding a place can create a legend.  The story carries so much value that today a plain hill is a historical landmark and a national park!

2012: The Year of Reinventing Marketing

A new year, a new way of marketing?

In the past 7 or 8 years the traditional methods of marketing have shown declining effectiveness.   At first the decline was slow overall, although more accelerated in some categories than others.  The decline in effectiveness of traditional methods was most visible in categories such as services, hospitality, beverages and entertainment at first.  Now it is quickly spreading to all  categories.

Miller Lite was a classic example of the traditional  method.  ”Taste Great. Less Filling” along with some brilliant advertising  and heavy media spending drove the brand to the number 2 market share.  But from 1994 to 2003 the brand went from a 23% market share to an 18% share.

Looking more narrowly at the light beer category, Miller Lite lost the number 1 position to Bud Light.  By the rules of brand positioning that shouldn’t have happened.  Miller Lite had a strong differentiating claim, while Bud Light had no product differentiation at all in its advertising.  By 2010 Miller Lite lost the number 2 position to Coors Light.

At the same time, marketers continue to use the old methods.  In part, I suspect that the continuing Great Recession is to blame.  I call it “The Tepid Trap”. The economy is bumping along too slowly to give marketers great confidence in the future.  Yet business is not in such a tailspin that people will take the leap of faith to a whole new approach.

Tepid economies result in tepid marketing strategies (okay, a gross generalization, I know).  From personal conversations with people on the corporate side, I sense a certain flight to safety and conservatism.  Not in the political sense but in the sense of  avoiding risk or substantial changes that will leave a person exposed if it fails.  It seems like an unconscious reflex, avoiding danger until business really picks up and there is more leeway for experimentation and risk taking.

Of course this is a broad generalization and many individual companies are bolding moving in new directions.  McDonald’s, Visa (whose stock is up over 40% year over year), Samsung.

So what will 2012 bring?  Will marketing stay in the Tepid Trap?  Or will we spring out of it?

I am an optimist.  I believe that 2012 is the year of reinventing marketing.