Influential Marketing Blog

5 Ideas From A Global Journey Through Beer Marketing

It is hard not to enjoy beer marketing. Even if you are not a marketer, this industry always offers creative advertising (particularly on TV) that is fun to watch and spends lots of money doing it. Every year at the Super Bowl, a good number of the Top 10 ads come from beer companies. In other venues beyond sports, beer advertising often promises good times, great parties and generally being able to escape from your daily life into a world of fun, travel and festivities.

When it comes to marketing strategy, however, it often seems like beer companies focus on being entertaining at the expense of being strategic. With campaigns that seem to change almost monthly and taglines that rarely last for more than a football season, it is easy to dismiss beer marketing as irresponsible spending to promote a high margin product. Is there more to beer advertising than 30 second eye candy and girls in bikinis? Here are a few popular marketing campaigns for beer - along with their corresponding marketing strategy that may yield some surprising lessons ...

1. Be Unique (Red Stripe Beer)

If you have ever had a Red Stripe beer from Jamaica, you know that it has a very unique bottle shape, shorter and stubbier than most others. The bottle sets the beer apart more than anything else, and this fact is brilliantly parodied in this ad featuring their central spokesperson - the Jamaican guy who loves nothing more than celebrating what beer can do with his trademark expression of Jamaican joy: "Hooray Beer!"

2. Demonstrate Loyalty (Bud Light)

The ad for Bud Light below follows the model this beer company has focused on for nearly every Super Bowl and football season - forget about your product features and focus on the simple message that guys will do almost anything for your beer. The strategy which seems buried in most of their ads is the unwavering loyalty that the guys in their ads have for Bud Light. They will build houses out of it, jump out of planes, and even walk around naked for a day just to get more of it. It is easy to argue that the name of the beer involved is entirely forgettable, but the ads stand out for being entertaining.

3. Create Associations (Estrella Damm)

A popular ad for European beer Estrella Damm - this campaign features a few ads which tell the story where the beer plays a supporting role and one of the tagline reads "Good times never end when you have something to remind you of them." Another ad features a growing relationship between two fellow travellers. While the taglines don't exactly roll off the tongue, the entire campaign creates stories that associate the beer with the common memory of moments like a short term romance on a backpacking trip through Europe that many of their target audience will remember nostalgically, and one that many people won't be able to help sharing.

4. Foster Aspirations (Dos Equis)

Probably the most popular campaign of the list, this inspired marketing from Dos Equis creates a persona for the Most Interesting Man In The World who, by his own admission, "doesn't always drink beer, but when he does he prefers Dos Equis." The image of this man is who every guy wants to grow up to be, and works because it places Dos Equis in a typically uncontested space as the choice for a more mature and refined guy versus an infantile male trying to relive lost days of keg stands and beer pong from college. That and irresistible lines like "he lives vicariously through himself" help position Dos Equis as the more aspirational choice in beers.

5. Reinforce Perceptions (Heineken)

The thing that European beers have always used to promote themselves against other brands is the sense that they are a more upscale and respectable choice when you go to a bar or similarly public place. Heineken's recent campaign takes this message and replays it with the powerful tagline - "give yourself a good name." The ads feature guys making bold decisions (like drinking with the scary bosses' daughter) and congratulating them on their choice. It helps reinforce the message that what beer you choose says something important about who you are, so choose well.

How Filmmaking Can Change The World (With Your Help)

Every community has its secrets. There are things that no one talks about because they are afraid to. Often, these things are not well understood and it is hard to know what to say about them. They are usually deeply personal as well and referred to as a stigma, which is a word that communicators who work in health care know well. When it comes to changing perceptions about a disease condition or issue, combating the stigma around it is usually the toughest battle to fight.

But if we don't try, then the unthinkable can happen. About five years ago, the father of my friend Rashi put a gun to his head and shot himself. He was struggling with a deep depression and no one in the community knew how to acknowledge it or help him. After years of struggling in the hospital, he died last year. This story has been repeated over and over in communities around the world. The fact is, mental illness is a taboo. Because it is not physically visible, many communities don't acknowledge it and this lack of understanding can lead to disastrous results.

While some are making strides in changing this, it still remains an undiscussed topic all over the world - including in my culture: the South Asian one. Inspired by the story of Rashi's father, this weekend another good friend, Rehana Mirza, is releasing her first feature film called Hiding Divya about 3 generations of women who struggle with mental illness and a community surrounding them who don't understand. It is a very personal project for the entire team behind it, and one that all of us hope can have a transformative power to reduce the stigma around mental illness in many communities, including our own.

If you live in New York City, NY; Edison, NJ, Novi, MI, Peachtree, GA, North Bergen, NJ or Fremont, CA - please consider going and seeing the film in person ... and if you happen to be in another community, check out the Facebook page for the film and read a letter from the Director of the film to help support this important effort.

Stigma can be a terrible thing and when films like Hiding Divya take on the tough challenge of shining a light on it and forcing communities to confront it, we all need to help share that story. The world needs more of them.

See a list of participating theaters or buy a ticket online >>

25 SXSW 2011 Panel Ideas Worth Getting Excited About

Every year the SXSW event starts the excitement around planning early by releasing their "panel picker" - an online interface that lists all the panel submission ideas for SXSW along with descriptions and offers anyone the chance to vote or comment on the panel choices. This feedback is then used by the planners of SXSW as 30% of the decisions to finalize all the sessions for the actual event. This year there were 2347 ideas submitted for the Interactive portion of SXSW, with the most popular category being Branding/Marketing/Publicity (of course) with 175 entries. Social Networking was the second most popular with 132 entries.

In this vast list, it is hard to find the ones really worth getting excited about. I spent some time in the interface reading descriptions and getting to see some of the common threads. Here are just a few of the more than 2000 entries that I think are really worth getting excited about. Please check them out and offer them your support and votes as well!*

1. YouTube vs Cave Drawings: Our Future Anthropological Imprint - This panel tackles a big question that I have often wondered about myself in terms of the legacy that all of our incessant tweeting will leave behind about the human race of our time and how we recorded our own history. I love the idea of this session.
2. The Art Of Enchantment - Guy, you had me at "the art." This is the worldwide introduction of Guy's new book and will definitely be huge - I plan to get there early for this one and you should too.
3. What Digital Tribes can Learn from Native Americans - Marketers talk a lot about tribes and I love the premise of this session which will be led by Allison Aldridge-saur of the Chickasaw Nation Division of Commerce. There is much that any of us could learn from the Native American culture and I'm thrilled to see a session idea that puts this into digital terms.
4. Be Heard: How to Innovate At Big Companies - This is a topic close to my heart as I hate all those self help books that just tell you to quit your job if you want to do what you love. There are plenty of ways for personal passion to coexist with working for a big company ... and sometimes you might even be able to do them at the same time.
5. Why Nurses Are Vital In Emerging Technology - It is a real shame that more of the tech and social media types who attend SXSW probably won't have heard of Phil - but he is a rockstar in the healthcare blogging world and a symbol of the growing ranks of nurse bloggers who will have some great thoughts to share in this session.
6. Unpacking Gender: Men, Women, Technology and More - To say that gender frames much of what we do and how we act probably isn't a newsflash - but what intrigued me about this panel idea was that Debbie Chachra from Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering promises to "unpack" these issues and offer more insight into the differences. It's a topic worth learning about.
7. Tweeting On Weekends - Are We Becoming Socially Anti-Social? -  Ok, this is my panel submission and of course it has to be on this list (if I didn't think it was good, I wouldn't have submitted it right?) It is a topic I care a lot about because I try hard not to let social media interrupt my social interactions with people I meet or my time at home with my two young boys. In this panel, we'll explore the leash that technology keeps us on, and how to manage it without losing your sense of perspective. (Disclaimer - This is a panel idea submitted by the author of this blog post, Rohit Bhargava)
8. F U 2.0 - Scott Stratten is the irreverent voice that many people working in marketing today need to hear and his perspective on the BS of all the 2.0 stuff around us and how to cut through it should be entertaining and educational.
9. Latinas in Technology: Beauty, Brains and Blogging - This panel organized by my new Ogilvy colleague Kety Esquivel focuses on a demographic that is often ignored and I am a big supporter of having more diversity and sessions like this at SXSW.
10. Brand Journalism: The Rise of Non-Fiction Advertising - I really like the term that Kyle Monson from JWT uses in this title of "non-fiction advertising." In theory, all advertising should be non-fiction, but focusing on how brands are becoming publishers of content is a strong topic and one that more and more brands are concerned about.
11. Stop Dreaming, Start Doing: Tips For Execution - Scott Belsky of Behance is the guru of helping you to make your ideas reality and this session is guaranteed to leave you with actionable information you will be able to use right away.
12. How NPR And PBS Can Reinvent Local Journalism - Kevin Dando from PBS is hosting this discussion which will be a must-attend session for anyone keeping a close eye on the future of the publishing and journalism worlds.
13. Marketing Museums: From the Web to the Door - There is some wonderful and mostly unrecognized innovation coming from Museums in the social media space and I was glad to see this session in the list of potential ones. Even if you don't work at a museum, the lessons in this about merging the online and offline worlds and adding a virtual dimension to something real are important lessons to take away.
14. Social Media Mythbusters - Peter Kim is a very smart guy and this session that takes apart some of the prevailing lingo of social media types and shines a light on it will be much needed. I just hope I don't use any of those words.
15. The Luxury/Digital Paradox: Taking Luxury Brands Digital - One of the most underdiscussed sectors in social media and digital is luxury brands - something I have shared before. I'm glad this panel is potentially going to be included at the very least so this message of just how important and relevant social media can be for luxury products is an important one.
16. How I Plan On Killing The Billboard - This is a bold promise from a filmmaker turned marketer, but the lessons in this session seem to be engaging and it is one of those where I want to see what happens so I would attend just for that.
17. Marketers at SWSXi - Don't Be A Douche - SXSW is one of those events in real danger of swallowing itself and losing the every edge that has made it so popular. Central to this danger is the growing role of marketers at the event. How can you reach people in this crowded event without being "a douche"? Hopefully this session will offer some good tips on that.
18. Block Party Capitalism: Where Analog and Digital Intersect - Jon Gerzema is one of those people with a job that gives him access to insights about people and behaviours that you or I might only read about. In this session, he promises to share what pickles; vinyl records, urban chickens, Farmville, flea markets and Tumblr all have in common. Ok Jon, you got me hooked.
19. Keds. The Original Sneaker, Relaunched. - I love a good case study and this looks like it will deliver exactly that. Keds has a great story and I'm looking forward to learning more about it.
20. The Art of Immersion: Tron - I was never a Tron guy, but the interesting story behind this panel from Frank Rose at Wired had me intrigued. Should be a fun session with lots of geek attention.
21. 500,000 New Mobile Users Daily? Welcome to India! - This one had to make my list because it was (surprisingly) about the only panel proposal that talked about anything related to South Asians or India. International topics in general are usually underrepresented at SXSW and if you are voting for sessions, I would strongly urge you to try and find just a few interesting international ones that you could offer some support to.
22. Intercultural Intelligence: Designing Your Site for Global Opportunities - This session from my friend Paolo Nagari will be worth checking out for anyone who is thinking of expanding globally and dealing with audiences with different cultural backgrounds. Paolo is a fountain of knowledge on how to effectively communicate with other cultures.
23. Your Computer is the Next Wonder Drug - Jon is a pioneer in the healthcare social media field and his blog posts routinely make the rounds at just about every big pharma company. In this session, he tackles some BIG questions about healthcare and social media and his take will be worth listening to.
24. Crowdsourcing: Innovation and/or Exploitation? - Kickstarter is a site that helps anyone get any idea funded, and in this session Fred Benenson tackles the increasingly asked question of whether crowdsourcing is innovation or exploitation, or perhaps a little of both. I'm looking forward to hearing and participating in the debate on this one.
25. 8 Easy Ways To Sabotage Your Film's Marketing - Though this is officially a submission for the Film portion of SXSW, I included it in this list because it is a topic I am passionate about and have wanted to lead a discussion on for several years now. This year I am finally lining up a killer panel of film marketing pros to share their dos and don'ts about marketing. (Disclaimer - This is a panel idea submitted by the author of this blog post, Rohit Bhargava)

*Note: My method for choosing these panels was based on looking at the presenters and the topics in the panel picker interface. In some cases, I know and have personal relationships with the speakers ... but no one solicited me or asked to be put on this list and aside from the two panel suggestions that I personally made (#7 and #25) I have no personal stake in any of these panels.

The 5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

About a week ago I started seeing a curious number of tweets, links and Google Alerts to a popular blog post I wrote 4 years ago. The reason was that today happens to be the four year anniversary of that post which first introduced the idea of Social Media Optimization or SMO as it is now popularly known into the world of digital marketing and on Wikipedia. For many of the readers who consistently read my posts today, this SMO post may have been the reason they first stumbled onto my blog. It became an unintentionally big idea that captured the attention of a growing niche of digital marketers who saw themselves at the intersection of working in search engine optimization (SEO) and wanting to branch out into new world of social media. 

In the four years since that post I have tried to focus this blog on my real passion of sharing insights that could inspire people to create better marketing to sell their ideas to the world. SMO was a point on that journey and given the interest that this one idea has sparked among digital marketers around the world, it is one that is worth revisiting today. As I thought about this post today, I realized that the ideal way to revisit SMO would be to try and answer the one question I have been asked most frequently by marketers around the world about SMO: Would you change these "5 rules" today given that the original post was written before Twitter or Foursquare or many other big trends or sites that are now becoming a big part of the social web?

The short answer is yes. The core change I would make is to add and focus on a word that I think truly describes the social web today in a way that few people really grasped four years ago: sharing. So, based on this, here are my thoughts on the 5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization:

1. Increase your linkability Create shareable content - Four years ago I focused on linkability because the main currency that could drive up your traffic was how many people were linking to your content. Today content can be liked or tweeted and it is about more than links - it is about creating content that is shareable. The better your content is, the more people will want to share it with their entire social networks whether they link it, like it, dig it or share it.
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy Make sharing easy - Following from the previous point, tagging and bookmarking only scratch the surface of the many ways that people can share content with others. They can post a short link to their profile, embed a video, send out a tweet or create a hashtag for a conversation. Limiting the ways of sharing to just tagging or bookmarking doesn't make sense anymore. The core of this rule, however, was the point about making it easy and that is still at the heart of this new rule. Once you have shareable content, it has to be one-button-easy so people will do it with minimal effort or thinking.
3. Reward inbound links Reward engagement - In 2006, the main thing most marketers were concerned about were inbound links. It was a time when Technorati was the standard by which we all measured the performance of our content and many bloggers focused more on their number of inbound links than their readership or traffic numbers. Today the real currency is around conversation or engagement. While there are a million definitions for "engagement" ranging from comments and discussion to posting or sharing content - this is the behaviour that matters most in the social web and the one that we should all focus on rewarding when it happens.
4. Help your content travel Proactively share content - This was the weakest of the original 5 rules, as the original rule simply talked about publishing your content in other formats such as PDFs or videos and submitting them to other sites. Instead, the essence of the new version of this rule is all about proactively sharing content in a different way. This encompasses everything from creating slides to post on Slideshare or documents to share on Scribd - as well as tweeting about your content or offering embeddable versions of it, or using RSS feeds to syndicate it. Proactively sharing even includes posting your content to social networking profiles or creating profiles on video sharing sites.
5. Encourage the mashup Encourage the mashup - The last original rule of SMO is the one that I would leave intact. The concept of the "mashup" where people take and remix your content by adding their own input and voice has only grown over the past four years. The mashup will be around to stay, whether the term continues to be used or not. Allowing people to take an ownership over the social content you publish will continue to be a key way that you can optimize your content for the social web.

On the original 5 rules, several other smart folks jumped in to add 12 more rules to the list ... it only makes sense for me to try and invite the same input this time around. What do you think of these updated rules? Are there others you would add to the list?

Gilty Secrets: 10 Marketing Techniques From Today's Hottest eCommerce Site

To say that Gilt.com is on fire may be something of a understatement. The site, which features daily special sales of luxury products at discount prices is on track by some estimates to pull in $400 million in sales for the 2010 calendar year. The growth of Gilt.com has coincided with a shift in how many consumers are thinking about luxury products. As a recent USA Today piece noted, "the new world of luxury is less about designer labels and glitz and more about shopping savvy and an I-feel-good-owning-this mentality." Gilt.com has grown to over 2 million members by catering exclusively to this mentality.

What makes the Gilt.com experience so irresistible? A big part of it is the sense that you are getting a great deal on products from brands that are normally much pricier, but smart marketing is just as much of a component in the success of Gilt.com. Taking some time to analyze what makes the marketing so powerful, here are 10 techniques that Gilt.com is using which might help other brands to duplicate some of this success:

1. Featuring amazing imagery.
The experience on Gilt.com starts with amazing imagery. This is clearly not a site selling average products, because everything about the imagery used on the site indicates a premium and desirable experience. More than that, the images are changing every day, which demonstrates that there is fresh content all the time and that the site will be worth visiting again and again.

2. Offering a sense of exclusivity.

Core to the Gilt.com experience is a sense of exclusivity. You need to be invited to join the site by a current member, and only once you become a member can you access all the special deals. The irony of this is that they have plenty of "sneak in" ways to become a member without getting invited through secret links - but the SENSE of exclusivity is what is most important. It doesn't pay for them to actively prevent people from becoming members, but they work hard to make their current members feel as though they are part of an exclusive club.

3. Focusing on the backstory.

Every product sold on Gilt.com has a backstory which is almost as important as the product itself. Why? Because when it comes to many luxury products, there is an inherent need from the customers to have a shareable story that they can tell to others along with the products they purchase. It is not about buying a blender. It is about buying a blender from a Belgian company that has been making them since 1930, and that you cannot find in any retail store near you.

4. Creating an urgency to purchase without excessive pressure.

Every product that you put into your shopping cart expires after 10 minutes. This may seem like a diabolical move to pressure you into purchasing - and to some degree it does work like that. The aim, though, is to limit the amount of time you can hold onto a product that someone else may want to purchase. As a result, the sense of urgency to buy is built into the site, and when coupled with a relatively easy return policy, it means that they can focus more on converting browsers to buyers in a timespan (10 minutes) that most other ecommerce sites would envy.

5. Providing significant rewards for referrals.

Once you become a member, the reward for referring someone else to the site is a whopping $25 in credit - far more than most other sites. This adds to the exclusivity experience, but also makes it likely that people will share their referral link far and wide with others. As you probably noticed, it is working for me also since I used my own referral link in this post as well.

6. Integrating deeply with email marketing.

Every day, members of Gilt.com get an email telling them about the special deals of the day and reminding them to visit the site to purchase those products before they sell out. They have a blog and a Twitter page as well, but for the vast majority of their users, email is likely driving the largest consumption and traffic because much of their target audience are at work where emails often come with pop up notices letting you know a new one has come in.

7. Selling items that are sold out.

As items sell out or are held in member's shopping carts, the site automatically lets you know and gives you a chance to be placed on a wait list for a product. Not only does this add to your emotional sense of wanting a product (after all, if it is "sold out" it must be good, right?), but it creates a secondary sales channel for Gilt.com where you may not have been able to purchase the product you were most interested in, but might come back to purchase it if it were available. The other benefit of this model is that it helps for projections and planning new sales if you have a good sense of the most popular products based on something active such as a consumer being asked to be put on a wait list for an item, versus something more passive such as impressions to a product or brand page.

8. Standing behind products they sell with editorial.

Not only does Gilt.com offer new products every day, they also stand behind the products they do offer. This "seal of approval" concept lets consumers know that the products they are buying are authentic but also tested for quality and will be exactly what they expect. This also allows Gilt.com on the backend to work with more and better companies to feature products because there is an inherent validation that takes place for a brand that does get featured on Gilt.com that may extend to that brand building more of a relationship or awareness among a desirable group of consumers.

9. Creating a daily ritual.

Every day at noon EST, an email comes noting that the sales for that day are open. Conveniently scheduled at the time when many office professionals are taking their lunch break, this consistently allows Gilt.com to create a ritual for their customers. Not everyone will buy a product every day, but just knowing that this format will take place every day allows consumers to plan a visit to the site as part of their day and helps to drive a big spike in traffic because you know that as soon as the deals open online there will be a frenzy to buy the most popular items before they sell out.

10. Customizing to platforms.

Soon after the iPad was launched, Gilt.com was ready with an app for iPad users that allowed them to purchase directly from the app. Today, more than 10% of overall sales come from the iPhone and iPad mobile platforms that this number is growing. By offering a customized experience for users on certain platforms, Gilt.com is making it easy to purchase no matter where you happen to be.

Not every brand will have luxury products or find this daily sales method easy to duplicate, but taking some of the marketing lessons that Gilt.com already knows could help a large number of brands who have some ecommerce component of their sites to create more engagement with their customers, and convert more of them to action as well.

Why Personal Branding Is So Misunderstood

Personal branding has a branding problem. If most people in business today were asked to describe someone who had a personal brand, the first image that often comes to mind is of the often-ridiculed "social media guru" persona - someone who talks endlessly about social media and is well known online for it, but has little real experience at anything beyond talking about themselves. Others might think of someone with a big personality who has used social media expertly to amplify their success. Earlier today a journalist for CNN/Fortune ignited this debate about the value (or lack of value) in a personal brand through an article that featured Scott Monty from Ford*.

In the piece, Scott was portrayed as someone whose "personal brand doesn't take a back seat to anyone else's -- not even that of Ford Motor Co., his employer." Many commenters have already jumped on the article throughout the day to defend Scott as a great guy and not the "sanctimonious self-serving asshat" as one commenter felt he was portrayed as in the article. This is not the first time that a debate about personal branding has erupted pitting the believers against the skeptics, and it likely won't be the last.

Is personal branding becoming a catchphrase to describe those who are using social media as a drip pan for their overflowing egos or is it just misunderstood? As someone who has spent considerable time building a personal brand while working at a large company, this is a question I have struggled with before and I believe it comes through to six main assumptions (some truth and some fiction):

The FICTION About Personal Branding

1. Personal branding is about ego instead of reputation. Ego is a dirty word, which carries with it the notion of a misbehaved, arrogant, generally pompous individual. The truth is, we all have egos - but a good personal brand is all about reputation. When you have one, people know something about you before you walk in the door. Hardly anyone would argue that your reputation is important, but somehow the label of "personal brand" became disconnected from that.
2. Personal brands are only grown at the expense of corporate brands. A main point from the Forbes piece seemed to be that if Scott Monty was growing his personal brand, then he was not doing everything he could be doing for Ford. Yet when we look at successful sales people or executives who post record sales or perform well and move on to bigger and higher paying jobs ... generally they are not lambasted for building their own reputation while successfully contributing to the company they work for. Personal brands are the same.
3. Only certain types of individuals have personal brands. When it comes to discussions of personal branding, there are certain types of individuals that you might point to as having strong personal brands - when the truth is that we all have personal brands. In an age where our virtual identity extends beyond just who we are in person and also encapsulates our profile on LinkedIn or the networks we join on Facebook - each of us has a digital reputation and that equates to a personal brand. Already, this personal brand impacts how people are searching for jobs and is likely to extend further to more parts of business as well.

The TRUTH About Personal Branding

1. Many personal brands START egotistical. As I have shared in blog posts before, it is much easier to be egotistical than to be open online. In fact, the place where most people start when using social media tools is on the more egotistical side, just talking about themselves. It is not a sign of raging arrogance, but of initial naivety. When you are not used to "engaging" online, it is easier to just talk about yourself. Eventually, the good personal brands get past this and become something more robust.
2. High profile tension between personal brands and companies will continue. There have already been several stories of individuals who built a personal brand and had difficulty remaining in their corporate positions and this will continue. To attribute this only to a phenomena that happens for personal branding, however, would be a mistake. There are situations every day where people outgrow roles at companies and move on, for many reasons. Growing a personal brand will continue to be one of these reasons, but should not be singled out.
3. Personal branding matters because PEOPLE matter. I have been vocal for several years now about the premise that people make decisions to buy from a company or talk about it based on the personal relationship they have with individuals who work there as much as the association they have with the product. If you have ever recommended a product that you didn't buy to someone who needed it, you know this well. Companies with personality succeed because they create a deep emotional connection with customers, and personality comes from individuals. If the faceless company is dying, as I believe it is in every industry, then more and more companies will need to hire people with strong personal brands and this tension between the individual and the company will be even more present in business.

The solution, in my opinion, is not to single out and vilify the people who are visibly working to balance personal brands with their employers', but instead to treat them as examples of a future in the business world that is rapidly approaching for us all.

*Disclaimer - Ford is a client of Ogilvy (my employer) and Scott is a personal friend of mine. This post was in no way solicited by either and represents only my honest opinion about personal branding.

Discovery Channel Uses Social Networking To Freak You Out

I have never been a big fan of horror movies. Getting scared on purpose was never something that I quite understood. One of the scariest movies I ever saw, though, was a film back in 1995 called Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman which showed the response that the world would likely have to a global pandemic if one were ever to occur. At the time I was in college at Emory in Atlanta right next door to the CDC and the film's storyline about the Ebola virus escaping felt very close to home. Tonight at 10pm the Discovery Channel is debuting a new show that will explore this idea of a global pandemic in an interesting new way. The show, called The Colony will take 7 volunteers and drop them into a condemned town without food or water. They are told there has been a biological disaster and are challenged to survive.

The show's premise itself is interesting, but what adds to the intrigue of the entire program is that they are pursuing a very smart strategy to let anyone take part in this social experiment by signing up for an online simulation of a global pandemic, that uses your own Facebook friends as characters in the "unfolding drama of the survival of humanity." This technique of using your real friends as the backdrop for a fictional experience created online is something that has been growing in use through efforts such as the popular "Elf Yourself" holiday greeting card campaigns last holiday season.

As this virtual experience around The Colony unfolds, it will be interesting to watch how it adds a real dimension to viewers of the show and (hopefully) synchronizes the experience so what is happening in your virtual version of The Colony mirrors what is happening in the show. The virtual experience so far has a combination of fake updates from your friend networks intermixed custom videos that seem to have been created to support the show from people like Cali Lewis. If this part of the social experiment works to engage viewers, we will likely see more networks and programs in the fall using this fictional virtual experience as a way to engage their most passionate fans. Assuming we all survive, of course.

What USA Network Knows About Branding That MTV Doesn't

The day that Michael Jackson died, I turned to MTV for the first time in several years. Like others in the so-called MTV Generation sandwiched between the youngest of Generation X and the oldestof Generation Y, I remembered growing up in the 80s with the battle cry of "I want my MTV!" On that day, however, I was greeted not with news coverage about Michael Jackson's death - but with a reality TV series about teen pregnancies. Confused, I shared in a tweet what many of my generation had felt for years:

"MTV is officially irrelevant. Michael Jackson just died and they are airing 16 and Pregnant."

In a time where services like VEVO are taking the role of offering 24 hour music video on demand, MTV has certainly had to reinvent itself. Others have written about how the brand has evolved (changing to a newly transparent logo) - but in that evolution the connection to the music has been almost completely lost. MTV is not about music anymore and this is a disregard for brand heritage that we see often in the world of television and entertainment. TBS was once a "superstation" offering all kinds of programming and sports and now is trying to focus on comedy and being "very funny." The Food Network, dealing with its own growing pains will be launching launched a cooking channel to separate the how-to cooking style programming from other food related programming. You could be forgiven for thinking that having a consistent brand really doesn't matter much in the world of entertainment.

Today the USA Network is launching a group contributed blog tied directly to the network's overall brand positioning focused on celebrating characters of all types. This blog, called Character Approved is featuring 10 voices in a variety of categories from Art to Food and I have been invited to write the Technology/New Media category.*

While the blogging project focuses on sharing stories of individuals, products and organizations that are having a positive impact on American culture - the marketing lesson worth repeating from this is how it is the latest effort in a branding campaign that essentially started more than 5 years ago where the USA Network created a vision for their brand that still exists and drives the brand today.

The tagline of "Characters Welcome" that you may have seen on the cable channel guides the programming decisions and recently has taken form outside of the network through programs such as the Character Approved awards and now this new blog. What I love about this guiding principle is that it allows the network to stand for something and extend beyond just the current programming of the moment. As of now, the strategy seems to be working - with USA currently placed as the #1 network in all of basic cable, with its programming being seen in 98.5 million U.S. homes. For me, focusing on sharing the stories of characters that are having an impact on the culture of America through technology and new media is a powerful idea and one that I am very excited about exploring and writing about over the coming year. Check out some of the initial posts now live on the blog and let me and the rest of the writers on this project know what you think!

*Disclaimer - I am compensated for my participation on the Character Approved blog as a contributing writer, however this and any future posts about the USA Network that I share on my blog are not compensated or scripted in any way and represent my own true opinion.

Why The "Old Spice Guy" Might Be The Perfect Branding Campaign

You might have seen a randomly bare chested and very good looking guy doing a bunch of short videos that look suspiciously like a funny commercial that has been on TV for months for Old Spice. Starting from a series of ads, over the last 48 hours the advertising team for Old Spice has created more than 200 short ads which are essentially video responses from the actor in the ads to comments and questions posted on Twitter. The real time nature of these videos has become huge online, driving millions of views of essentially what are branded ads and spreading the creative of the TV spots to a much wider audience online.

It is a good idea and the creative is funny, but there are several things that make this campaign stand out as a way to refresh the tired and sagging Old Spice brand. They come down to the basics of good marketing - from strategy to creative, but most importantly, the level of integration between television, online and social media in this campaign stands out. Unlike many other consumer goods campaigns that fall short when it comes to everyone collaborating, this is one of those few campaigns that seems like it was actually approached holistically by one team that didn't just chase the trend of the month, but used the platforms of TV, Twitter and YouTube primarily in the ways they were best suited. Here's a short summary with some key marketing lessons I will be taking away from this effort:

• Smart Strategy - The marketing strategy behind this campaign is simple - show a great looking guy and tell women that he is "the man their man could smell like." Everyone knows that when it comes to bath products for guys, a huge purchaser is likely women - so instead of turning women into sex objects as Axe does to reach the single guys, Old Spice set their target as including and even speaking directly to women.
• Creative Execution - The creative execution of the "Old Spice Man" using actor Isaiah Mustafa has been a hit, from his funny rapid paced TV spots and offered an instantly memorable pitch for Old Spice that people remembered and even mimicked. The campaign started with a strong creative execution that spoke directly to mostly women and while many men didn't quite "get" the commercial initially, it was all many women could talk about.
• Cross Media Integration - Moving from a TV spot, the team at W&K behind this integrated social media in a way that is often lacking. Even with brands that have significant followings through one type of social media (such as Champion with over 100,000 Facebook fans and a great current campaign all around sportsmanship) are falling flat when it comes to translating that audience to a different platform and type of conversation (their Twitter page has only 45 members). For Old Spice, they are responding to tweets directly through videos, letting people create their own versions of the ad, engaging on Facebook and it is all paying off. As of the time of writing this post, their YouTube channel has nearly 7 million views, nearly 600,000 fans on Facebook and more than 70,000 followers on Twitter.
• Personal Investment - This is a relatively intangible piece, but the advertising agency team behind this is clearly personally invested in the campaign. They love it, and are actively sharing their excitement about it. On the Interactive Creative Director Ian Tait's blog are photos of the line of employees waiting to meet the Old Spice Man and also a personal response to a negative tweet someone shared and more details about the team behind the campaign. While most consumers won't see this dialogue or probably even care, I happen to know as a fellow agency guy that when the team working on a project loves it - it comes through in the campaign.

5 Types Of Consumer Generated Marketing (CGM) Campaigns

Over the past several years, consumer generated marketing campaigns have become more and more popular. After all, what brand wouldn't want tons of users to create content on their behalf and share it online with their entire social networks? And by the way, these consumers will create it all for free. For this reason, CGM was often heralded as a dream come true type of situation for brands and even a way to supplant their marketing agencies and get their advertising created for free.

As time went on, though, brands realized the downside of consumer generated media could be a lack of control and potential risk for their brand if the content isn't great. That added to the fact that while consumer generated media was the shiny new object that everyone wanted, it wasn't always the best choice in terms of a creative strategy or execution to get people involved. So when is a consumer generated marketing strategy the right choice for your brand?  To find the answer, you need to first understand that there are several different types of consumer generated media campaigns and picking the right one will have a lot to do with your future success or failure. Here are the five types that I have seen online as well as examples of each one:

1. Reinvent a branded asset. "What's Your Version Of ....?"

If your brand has been around for some time, you have likely built up some equity and recognition in the elements of your brand. One of the best ways to involve the online population of content creators in your brand is to ask them for help in reimagining something intrinsic to your brand. Folgers did this recently by asking consumers to re-record the famous theme song - "the best part of wakin up, is Folgers in your cup." The resulting finalists were great examples of talented individuals making the brand their own and also helped to remind anyone who watched any of these finalists just how much a part of their own past Folgers might have been.

2. Find your dream job. "What If You Were ... ?"

All of us might imagine ourselves reinvented, but the fact of social media is that it can offer many great tools to help you think about the process of being what you want to be. There are a growing number of campaigns that fit the mold of helping you to envision yourself as doing something different, with the most popular likely being Queensland Tourism's Best Job In The World campaign which invited you to pitch yourself as the new Tourism director for a small island in Australia. Another example is MTV's search happening now for the World's First "TJ" or Twitter Jockey. Contest elements there included creating your own hashtag and publicizing it.

3. Get rewarded for your creativity. "Submit your creative idea for ..."

This may be the most popular form of consumer generated media campaign, where you invite participants to submit videos or photos or stories and reward them based on their creativity. The rewards typically focus on visibility and promotion versus prizes or cash - case in point would be Doritos efforts around the Super Bowl for the last several years where they aired a consumer generated TV commercial during the Super Bowl.

4. Share your story, win a prize. "Tell us ... - and you could win!"

A format that works for just about any brand, this is a combination of a promotional campaign and something that engages consumers by getting them to share something personal in return for the opportunity to win a prize. An example of this type of campaign is one that Bertolli* recently launched on Facebook to get consumers to share what inspires them.

5. Share your idea to get a grant. "Get funded to change the world."

In a nice intersection between social good and marketing, there are a growing number of sites that allow you to submit your idea for how to make an impact on the world and get funded. Some are like the Pepsi Refresh project which cross into the realm of philanthropy while others are more focused on connected those in need with those who would fund or vote for them such as the American Express Members Project or DonorsChoose.org.

Are there any other types of consumer generated media marketing campaigns that you have seen which fit another category? Share them in a comment and I will amend this list.

*Note - Bertolli is a client of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence.