Influential Marketing Blog

Help Feed 1 Million Children A Day

This weekend I am gathering with more than 800 fellow South Asians for the annual NetIP Conference in Boston. The event is a three day long exploration of everything from the many innovations in microfinance being led by Indian entrepreneurs to book readings by Indian authors such as Anita Jain (featured in today's NY Times Book Review for her new book, Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India). My own session I led today was all about networking effectively, and throughout the weekend I was continually impressed by the power and diversity of the South Asian network and just how much of a difference many people from it are making in the world. One of the best stories to come out of the event was about a nonprofit organization that you may not be familiar with, but by all accounts it is one of the most ambitious, largest and stunningly successful in the world.

Akshaya Patra Foundation has a very simple goal ... to end the cycle of powerty in India by feeding 1 million school children in India every day. To really understand the scale of this, imagine the catering that goes into feeding an entire Superbowl stadium of people, then multiply it by 12. Doing anything for 1 million people on a daily basis is a near impossible task, and yet Akshaya Patra has pioneered a model for doing it that many other NGOs are now looking at as a template for launching similar efforts. The real power of this idea comes from it's simplicity. If you can offer hot meals to children every day, you are providing an incentive for them to come to school each day. If they come to school, they can end their cycle of poverty.

Aside from telling you about this foundation, this post is actually an extension of a call for help that one of the speakers at the NetIP event made. Akshaya Patra is one of the causes that you can vote for in the American Express Member's Project campaign. If they are one of the top vote getters in the contest, they have a chance to win a $1.5 million grant from American Express. Below is a great video that will give you a bit more insight into how Akshaya Patra works (including a look at their bread maker that can churn out more than 10,000 roti's per hour). Check it out and consider voting for them sometime before midnight on September 1st and help them fulfill their mission of feeding 1 million schoolkids each day.

Disclaimer: American Express is an Ogilvy client, but I do not currently work on any projects for them and have never worked on anything relating to the Member's Project.

aloft Beijing: Exclusive Pre-Opening Photo Gallery

While in Beijing I was coincidentally staying in a Starwood hotel right next door to the soon to be opened aloft Beijing property. Thanks to the kindness of a few people working there, I was able to get inside the main floor and take a few photos of the lobby area. Several aloft properties have opened already and I'm still waiting for my first chance to stay in one and talk about the experience. I have been following the marketing of the new brand with interest ever since they launched their virtual hotel in Second Life two years before building the hotel in real life.

As we head into a holiday weekend, I hope you enjoy this inside look at aloft Beijing, set to open on September 1st. I'll return on September 2nd with a full calendar of new posts, including a look at branded books, being microfamous, my upcoming speaking calendar and more ...

The Real Secret To Apple's Success

At some point just about every marketer is bound to look at something that Apple is doing and wish they could have done it for their own brands. There are a few other brands that have this universal admiration from marketers. Coca-Cola is the other notable example that comes to mind. Yet there is a temptation I have noticed to simplify the success of Apple to two things: innovative products and great marketing. I would love to believe this as much as any other marketer, but there is a crucial missing third element that most people never talk about which I think is actually the most important reason Apple has been so successful. They do one thing that almost none of their competitors in any market can do ... they control distribution.

They have their own stores, their own sales people, and their own model for selling their products that cuts out any middleman or competitors completely. The fact that they control distribution offers many benefits:

1. Consistency of messaging - As opposed to other consumer electronics brands that must educate sales people who work for someone else, Apple can control their sales force and the messages that they learn to talk about. As a result, everyone tells the same story about their products.
2. Removes the competition at point of sale - A big issue for many of their competitors is that a customer may come into a store with one product in mind, but can often get steered toward another during the time they are in store. Often they will walk out not with the product they intended to buy, but something that was cheaper, recommended more heavily by the sales staff, or (most frustratingly) another product whose packaging simply was more appealing.
3. Makes upselling easier - When you walk into an Apple store, everything is Apple branded in some way (even the products manufactured by other companies). As a result, you are in the ultimate upselling situation, where you might pay $45 for a connector cable that would ordinarily cost $5 elsewhere. When you are captive in the store and already spending $499 on a big product, who really cares about another $45, right?
4. Retail environment reinforces the community - Apple fans are enthusiastic about the brand and products that they love. Because Apple has distribution focused on their stores, they can create events, features and resources that all reinforce this community. From the Genius Bars to special events hosted at Apple stores, this offers an invaluable marketing asset that few of their competitors can match.
5. Pricing is controlled - It is virtually impossible to find huge discounts on Apple products (particularly new ones). This is another effect of this controlled distribution, that if you are setting the places people buy your products, you can also centrally control the price. Not only does this allow for more consistency, it also gives you the ability to include pricing in your marketing materials and ads because you know its the same price everywhere.

Fighting The Puerto Ricans And 3 Ways to Vote For Me

This is a post about three things going on right now that I'd like to ask for your vote for. The first two are panel sessions that I quietly proposed for next year's SXSW conference which are now online and ready for voting. For those of you who were there this year, you might remember my "10 Easy Ways To Piss Off A Blogger" session that was a great group discussion and lots of fun. My ideas for this year will hopefully be similarly engaging and I have cut and pasted the full descriptions from the panel picker for both below:

Why Austin Stays Wierd And You Should Too (click to visit page and vote)
In an age of faceless corporations, consumers are demanding more authenticity. Join the award winning author of the fun new marketing book Personality Not Included for this eye opening panel of local Austin heroes talking about what makes Austin so special and what marketers can learn from its example.

Curiosity Marketing: Using Secrets To Create Engagement (click to visit page and vote)
Secrets are irresistible and using them in your marketing can offer the ultimate hook for customers to share. From a restaurant with a secret menu item to the origin of the fabled Konami Code, this session will share examples and practical advice on how to put secrets to work in your marketing.

If one or both look interesting to you, I'd love your vote in the panel picker interface on the SXSW site. The last place I'm asking for your vote is in the ongoing saga that is the PRWeek Blog Competition. Though I initially found it ironic that my blog was even included since I usually focus much more on marketing than PR specifically, I do work for a PR agency and I suppose that qualifies me as much as anything. I've made it from the original 32 blogs to be among the top 8 left standing, but I'm currently far behind my opponent this week, the brilliantly titled blog "Glass House" authored by Frank Shaw from Waggoner Edstrom. Voting closes later today, and I'd love to at least give Frank a run for his money. Vote for me here >>

In return for your support, I pledge that if I make it to the next round, I will work hard to ensure that every baby in America has a pacifier, that there is finally peace in Tasmania and that the PR industry mobilizes against the severe threat from Puerto Rico against our acronym. PR stands for Public Relations, and it always will under my watch.

PS - I don't feel bad about doing this post as I already did a "real" post today as well, so you can't call me out for pandering or rampant self promotion. Or maybe you can - but at least I'll have something to say in my defense ...

JupiterImages Introduces Loyalty Program for Stock Photo Buyers

There was a time about a year and a half ago when I used to run all of our client's search marketing on Google and Yahoo on my personal corporate card. It was, as you might expect, a logistical nightmare to put in all the expense claims for that (particularly since Google insisted on charging you in increments once you neared $500) ... but the up side was that I got quite a few credit card points on my card. A year and a half later, I don't miss the headache of doing all those expenses, but I do remember thinking at the time that I had unintentionally stumbled upon a great and dangerous marketing opportunity for vendors of services like Google: create a loyalty program.

I say this can be dangerous, because if advertisers can compensate media planners directly through rewards like this, then there is an incentive for media planners to just buy space from the vendors they have relationships with. Of course, this happens with regularity already, but the "rewards" are usually through the form of expensive meals or events in exclusive destinations. There are some vendor situations, however, where it could make sense and not cross the ethical boundary. Stock photography could be one such situation. Despite their claims of exclusivity, stock agencies often carry the same or very similar collections. Designers are usually steered toward particular stock collections to choose their images and agencies as well as corporate design teams buy these images in bulk.

Recently I was invited to participate in JupiterImages SelectRewards program, which is exactly what it sounds like: the stock photography industry's first rewards program. Despite my frequently telling them over the phone that buying stock images is not part of my job description and probably never will be, I still manage to be on their list to get communications like this. I don't really mind it, though, as most of their marketing collateral features beautiful photography and is fun to look at as a marketer. Still, this program strikes me as a brilliant marketing move from Jupiter to take on the leader in their industry, Getty Images. What Art/Stock Photography Buyer in any group wouldn't love this program? Now you can get rewarded for the purchases you are making on behalf of your company. Despite the challenges to their business model from upstarts like iStockPhoto targeting the lower end of the market and Getty's dominance at the high end, JupiterImages seem to be the smart challenger in the middle ... which is often the best place to innovate from. I suspect if the program takes off it won't be long before other vendors in the stock industry and outside it take notice.

An Insider's Guide To Marketing On Flickr

Now that I am getting back on the grid after three weeks in Asia, I thought a good follow up post to my time covering the Olympics in Beijing would be sharing some tips on one site that I ended up very actively using throughout the Olympics: Flickr. I have had a Flickr account for several years now, but always looked at the examples of Brian Solis and Josh Hallet (among others) and felt I wasn't quite the super user of Flickr that I aspired to be. While I'm not as profilic in capturing the people from all the events I attend as those two, I do consider myself an enthusiastic amateur photographer and at one point even considered doing it professionally. Now that I find myself squarely on the amateur side, I do have the same drive to have my photos seen and appreciated (below is a "Best of Beijing" gallery I just put together) ...

While working on the Lenovo Voices of the Olympic Games project from Beijing, I also rapidly discovered that Flickr can be a marketing goldmine for the right project. Over about ten days, I uploaded hundreds of photos into 21 sets covering everything from scorpions in the street market at Wangfujing to an epic (and underreported) women's beach volleyball match between Russia and Georgia. The biggest lesson I learned is that Flickr offers one of the largest image archives and communities online and one that is often not targeted because marketers aren't yet good at creating the one thing they need to have credibility in Flickr ... quality non-marketing images.

This is a big deal because Flickr is not just a community of photos, it is a community where high quality photography is appreciated. Sure, people use Flickr to share their point and shoot photos with family, but the power users of Flickr and the communities that you would care about as a marketer are usually looking at very high quality images. So before you try to use any of the techniques in this insiders guide, you need to make sure your photographs are actually good enough to bother. Assuming they are, here are a few things I learned about using Flickr for marketing ...

1. Go Pro - Getting a Flickr "Pro" account is like the green fees in golf. Of course, you can upload up to 200 images for free and have an account without paying, but you don't get the "pro" icon next to your name and your account doesn't have the same authority for members of the community. If you are going to use Flickr to do any marketing, put up the 25 bucks and get yourself a pro account. (PS - I'm not getting any commission from anyone for telling you that!)
2. Create Collection homepages - Flickr photos are arranged into sets and collections. Sets are like photo galleries or albums, and collections group various photo albums together. As you organize your photos, think about how to make each set about a certain them, and then group them together into collections. Once you have a collection homepage, this can be the public URL that you send people to. In my case, I created a Tiny URL for my public collection from Flickr at www.tinyurl.com/beijingflickr. That way, I could use the same URL even as I added new galleries to the collection each day.
3. Think thumbnails - Sets, collections and individual images are represented by thumbnails. These are the visual elements that need to engage someone before they are inspired to click and delve further into your account. When you take and crop your photos, paying attention to how the thumbnails look matters. More importantly, whenever you create a new set the thumbnail is set by the first image. Make sure you change it to the one that offers the most compelling reason to click and see the rest of the set.
4. Tag properly - Tagging sometimes seems like the online equivalent of going to the dentist, you know you should do it but always manage to put it off in place of doing something else first. On Flickr, tags are a big reason that people can find images and tagging yours properly is a necessary step. Use the right descriptive keywords, but also check and see what people are already searching for and see if any of those tags may apply to your images. Aside from direct links, many of your image views on Flickr will likely come from people searching for these tags.
5. Share real time - One of the most powerful benefits of Flickr is that when you are at an event or something current that people are likely to care about in a particular timeframe, speed of getting photos online matters. If you have a blog, configure it to work with Flickr. If you are using a computer, use the Flickr Uploadr tool to get your images online faster. The closer to your event you can get your photos up, the more likely it is that people will use them to refer to, share with others and drive traffic to.
6. Join and contribute to groups - No matter what you are taking pictures of, chances are there is a Flickr group with others who are already sharing photos of it. People who are active in Flickr groups tend to also be some of Flickr's most active (and often influential) members. As a result, joining groups not only lets you be part of a greater community and conversation on a certain theme, it can often give you a direct connection to Flickr users who really matter. Remember, what you post into a group must be relevant and on topic or else you risk alienating yourself and your brand.
7. Actively promote and approve reuse - Lots of services, bloggers and media are now using Flickr images to power their own stories and media. Once you start getting your imagery noticed, you will likely start to receive invitations from individual bloggers and services like NowPublic asking for permission to reuse your photos. This means your photos are gaining traction. Try to approve the requests quickly and encourage more people to use your images ... and credit you properly for them, of course.
8. Sex it up - Ok, this is a pretty gratuitious strategy, but it does work to feature scantily clad people in images to get more eye traffic. In my case, this meant creating a separate gallery in my Flickr account for the dancing beach girls from the beach volleyball event at the Olympics. I'm not surprised to say that it's still the top performing gallery of all 21 and continues to bring in views which then often continue from people looking through other images in my collection.
9. Enable stats - Flickr has a great new tool which allows you to get deeper metrics on your photos. They have smartly realized, however, that not everyone cares about using something like this. So instead of giving it to all their users, they have a step where you need to ask for it to be turned on in your account, and 24 hours later you will start to get metrics on overall views, engagement and referalls. The last point is particularly useful, as now you can see who else is driving people to your photo collections.
10. Keep going - This is a challenge I will face as I move forward from the Olympics where I had a higher volume of photos than I may have in coming weeks. Nonetheless, now that I have started to use Flickr to promote my images, I hope to continue at future events and keep some momentum going. If you start to use Flickr for marketing, your challenge will be the same ... to avoid having one big spike and then no more activity.

This post is mostly focused on photography, but over the next few weeks I intend to try them out for some video that I created during the Beijing Games as well. I may post an update if this changes these recommendations signficantly, but for now I am anticipating using many of the same techniques to promote the videos I put onto Flickr just as I have been doing for photography.

Visa's Exclusive Olympic Sponsorship Backfires

There is a myth in marketing today that many people blindly believe about sponsoring events ... that you always need exclusivity. The benefits of being an exclusive sponsor are easy to list, but there are some less considered negative aspects that could end up doing more harm to your brand than good. Let's look at the stories of a worldwide Olympic sponsor for whom the strategy of being an exclusive sponsor may not be such a good idea ... Visa.

Just about every Olympic traveller here in Beijing has a story to tell about one really annoying moment when they were trying to pay for something and learned that at all Olympic venues the only card they could use was a Visa and no other type of credit card. The fact is, people already have decided on their credit cards before arriving at the Olympics. Hardly any first time Olympic visitor is going to know that Visa is the only card accepted at the Games, and arriving here to learn this fact can make life very difficult and expensive. In addition, business travellers are often locked into a particular kind of credit card to use for work and finding that they cannot use it is a very big inconvenience that is blamed on Visa. The end result is lots of negative experiences and consumer anger against Visa, including several people I spoke to who even said they would NOT get a new Visa card because of this tactic. The incremental sales and revenue for Visa cards at the Games may be good, but the word of mouth generated for Visa at the world's largest sporting event is nearly all negative.

Another example of the down side of exclusivity from the Olympics is what I remember from Foster's sponsorship of the Games in Sydney. If you are among the many people in America who think Fosters is actually an Australian beer, let me burst your bubble. It is an American beer and before the Olympics in Sydney, you could not find it anywhere in Australia. During the Sydney Games, lots of Americans travelled to Sydney, which Fosters knew, so they purchased a large sponsorship where they were one of two kinds of beer served at events. I went to one beach volleyball event and vividly remember one side of the beer stand with the Aussie beer sold out, and the Fosters side with lots of stock untouched. It was an embarassing moment for Fosters. Added to that was all the Australians who talked about how Fosters was not, in fact, Australian.

There are likely many other examples of brands that should think a bit harder about whether an exclusive sponsorship actually makes the most sense for them. Don't get me wrong, sometimes exclusive sponsorships can work very well, if the strategy aligns with the experience offered and way that the brand is integrated into the event. Adidas' sponsorship of the Olympics works because they supply all the uniforms and custom made gear. Omega's sponsorship works because they are the official timepiece at an event were time really matters. Not surprisingly, I think Lenovo's sponsorship of the Games works for a similar reason. Ultimately, there are some brands who can realize the benefit of exclusivity and some that cannot. The trick is understanding where your brand fits before you drop a big chunk of your marketing budget into an exclusive sponsorship that won't deliver the way you expect.

Secret Things Only An Olympic Athlete In Beijing Would Know

I spent the morning today at a press event for a handful of Lenovo's athlete bloggers all talking about their experience of blogging during the Olympics. The three participants we had were Peter Lopez (a Peruvian Tae Kwon Do athlete), Carissa Gump (an American weightlifter), and Seth Kelsey (an American fencer). The event was slightly formal for a blogger event as it was based around a conference table, but getting these athletes into a room together to talk about their shared experiences was really fun to watch. Along the way in this event and through other conversations I've had with athletes, I picked up on several observations that only an athlete would know. Here are a few:

1. Technology is a big topic of discussion - If you are a tech geek like me, then you probably saw the Fast Company cover article on how technology is changing the Olympics. What you might not realize is just how big of a topic of conversation this is among most athletes. In past games, the big topic seemed to be doping and drugs and whether certain types of supplements should be considered "drugs" for how they can enhance performance. While that topic hasn't disappeared, in these games it seems technology is the new drug.
2. Blogs get you more interviews - Of the athletes that I spoke to with blogs, they raved about how much media the blog manages to get for them and their sport. The reason is simple ... blogs are easy to find. If you were a journalist with a crazy deadline and high pressure expectations to produce lots of stories every day out of the Olympics, wouldn't you want someone to make your job easier? Athletes with a blog are easier to find, have linkable content, often have photos that can be reused alongside an article, and most importantly, they are accessible over email or through commenting. A word to aspiring Olympians: athlete's with blogs get more media.
3. Skype is the killer app - Lenovo may be the ones providing the iLounge and access to the Internet, but it is Skype that is keeping athletes connected with their families back home. As I walked around the iLounge taking a quick look at the sites that athletes were looking at (no, I didn't go undercover), many were using Skype. It seemed by far to be the most popular site (along with web based email sites) for the athletes.
4. Travelling is a pain in the *ss - FOr many athletes, the gear they need to carry makes life in airports and on the road really tough. Imagine if you have a tough time at the airport with your bags what a fencer, or javelin thrower or hockey player needs to deal with. When we arrived at the Beijing airport, the US Baseball team was on the same flight and their bags took even longer than ours. So next time you find yourself complaining about your baggage delay, just sit back and imagine you were in an equestrian event and had to check in a horse. Enough said.

There are others I'll share in future posts, but time is short and I'm off to upload a few more videos and photos.

Notes From Inside The Beijing Olympic Athletes Village

Today I had a chance to do what I have never been able to do at the other two Olympics I attended ... get an inside look at the Athlete's Village. For those who don't know, the Athlete's Village at any Olympic Games is usually the most quarantined area of the Games. Media are not allowed inside, family and friends are only allowed with special limited time credentials, and athletes are usually left alone to focus on competing in their events. A large number of athletes never even leave the village until after their events are over.

So I clearly jumped at the chance to get inside as part of my live blogging and on the ground efforts for Lenovo. Our aim was to meet athletes and capture their stories, as well as share a real voice from inside an exclusive area of the Games normally off limits to anyone but competitors. Walking around the Village was an interesting experience, as every moment you are passing athletes who are someone's hero. They may be offering hope to an entire nation, or the motivating force behind a new generation of young competitors in their sport. To see them all in one place is a humbling experience. We have several videos from our time inside the Village, but the two below are particularly interesting. Hope you enjoy this inside look at the Athletes Village at the Beijing Olympics!

WALKING TOUR OF THE ATHLETE'S VILLAGE:

INTERVIEW WITH SHAUN RUBENSTEIN (SOUTH AFRICAN KAYAK MEDAL HOPEFUL):

How To Bargain Effectively In Olympic Beijing, China

The one thing I always relearn every time I return to Asia is the art of bargaining. It is one that is strangely missing from most people's daily lives if they live in America. Perhaps that is the reason many Americans are so bad at it. When you live in a culture where bargaining is expected, it becomes second nature. In Beijing, bargaining is prevalent in convenient places. I say this because there are moments where you really don't want to bargain. Restaurants and taxis come to mind as two examples. I hate having to haggle about price with a taxi driver before getting in. You don't usually have to do that here.

When it comes to shopping, however ... it is all about bargaining and the better you do it, the more satisfying your purchase and the farther you can stretch your money. Here are some tips I've uncovered for how to bargain effectively in China and come away with what you what at a fair price:

1. Get the price first - Never ever pick anything up, try anything on, or even look for any period of time at something without first extracting a price. Doing this forces them to set a starting point before they can hook you on a product.
2. Don't give them your price right away - The flip side of this is that a smart seller will always try to get you to tell them "your price." Your main goal is to avoid giving them your price until later. As much later as you can manage.
3. Keep looking at other things - Nothing pins you down faster than if you are laser focused on one product. If they know you really want it, they are far less inclined to offer you a better price.
4. Walk away or create a time pressure - Using an accomplice is good for this ... the main thing you want is to create a reason for them to do the deal quickly. If you "need to leave," you can often get a better price.
5. Do them a favor - When you come back, make them feel like you are doing them a favor by staying. Because you like them and you want to buy, but you need a better reason (ie - a better price) in order to stay.
6. Add a second - Early in the bargaining, they will try to get you to agree to buy more than one of whatever you are interested in. Always start by bargaining for one. When you feel you are getting their bottom price, ask them what the price would be if you buy two. Then three, or four. You may not want that many, but now you know what they are willing to go down to for one. And often you can get the second basically for free.
7. Set a final price - When you have finally done all this and locked in a price in your head, then you can finally write that price on their calculator they have been using to tell you their prices. Make sure that you do this quietly, the last thing you want is for other people to hear the great price you are getting, or else the seller may not sell to you for that price anymore. When you set your final price, make sure to tell the seller that if they do that price, you'll buy it right now. Otherwise you'll have to go.

If you have bargained correctly, usually this last step will be really fast and they will agree. What I love about bargaining in China as opposed to other cultures is that they are very fair about their deals.  If you made a deal to pay 90 and give them 100, they will give you 10 back without a fuss. In other places, it pays to have exact change in case the seller says they "don't have any." That's about it. Hope this post helps you to get a great deal while you're traveling to China or any other country where bargaining is popular.