Influential Marketing Blog

An Inside Look At Beijing During The Olympics

I have officially been in Beijing for 4 days now. I start this post with that admission, because before you read this I want you to know that I'm no expert on Beijing or China. Before this current trip, I have been here once before. Aside from a few useful phrases, I don't really speak any Mandarin ... and any experience benefit I might have from having been to Beijing before has surely been erased from more than ten years of development and more recent construction and preparation for the Olympics.

Still, I travel often and like to think I can adapt to new places relatively fast. So when I thought about sharing a few of my experiences from Beijing over the past few days, and getting ready for a week of blogging about the Games here for Lenovo, my first thought was to share a few things I have learned so far about getting around and perhaps challenge a few perceptions that people have had about Beijing from media.

1. The Pollution - This was one of the hottest topics in the media about Beijing, that the pollution would create a huge problem for athletes of all sorts. The truth is, the pollution on the ground has been much less of a concern than another simple fact ... Beijing is a hot and humid city. Pollution or not, it is actually the heat and humidity that cause the biggest concern for athletes. I have been to many polluted cities across Asia, and Beijing is certainly nowhere near the worst. In fact, the place I had the toughest time breathing was not related to pollution at all. It was in Lima, Peru thanks to the altitude of the city.
2. The Language Barrier - This is a very real concern about Beijing and means that you need to learn to travel a bit differently. Whereas in many other cities, you can learn to speak more slowly or use a few well chosen words (airport, hotel, bathroom, etc.) and people will understand you, native Mandarin speakers have no such frame of reference. As a result, you need to rely much more on written directions and images. The most useful thing you can always carry with you are a bunch of cards with destinations pictured and written in English. Always get your to and from destinations written down by your hotel concierge, and get used to asking a few people to piece together your destination based on multiple directions (crowd sourcing directions works here).
3. The Olympic Venue Security - Getting into and out of Olympic venues has its own learning curve that are particular to Beijing's games. These are my third Olympics and so I do have a frame of reference, however the security at these Games out of necessity needs to be far beyond what it has been in any previous Games. Most Olympic venues have a single gate of entry, which may require you to walk 1 or 2 kilometers all the way around a venue. The positive aspect of this is that because entry is consolidated, BOCOG can place all their resources in this location, so getting through security and into a venue is a very fast process once you find the correct entrance.
4. The Nightlife - One of the persistent themes in the media you may have seen is that many journalists are calling this the "no fun Olympics." I was speaking to Jim, the blogger behind www.beijingboyce.com, about this and his point of view was that the main problem is that they don't really know where to go. Beijing Boyce is a leading blog in helping people to find the truly fun food, drink and nightlife destinations in Beijing not to be missed, and I have already started using it as a brilliant resource and guide to the city. I wished I had more time to spend with Jim to get more insight, but if you are ever in Beijing, this is a blog you will want to bookmark.
5. The Transportation - Like many other travellers here, I have had my moment of standing around for more than an hour on a street corner competing to catch a taxi with a dozen other people in the same situation. For me, this situation ended positively because it gave me the motivation to try using Beijing's Subway system and I was pleasantly surprised. As opposed to the stifling hot stations in Washington DC (my hometown), the station I used here was air conditioned, brand new and trains ran frequently. The signs were useful and in English and the fare was quite cheap (2 Yuan - about 35 cents) per journey. Taxis are cheap as well to go from one side of the city to another and the measures the government has taken to curb traffic (alternating days you can drive your car based on your number plate ending in an odd or even number) and essentially removing trucks from the roads has been helping to avoid gridlock. I suspect that the weeks of the Olympics may be the easiest time to travel in Beijing.

If there is another area of travel or the city that you have heard about and are interested in knowing more about, leave a comment here and I'll do my best to share some thoughts about it.

Why Sprint's New Campaign Wins Only 50% Of Their Battle

As I tour around at events talking about why brands need to have a personality, a question that comes up often is about which brands don't have a personality and suffer from facelessness. One of the most obvious categories that has built a dreadful reputation for itself is the wireless phone industry in the US. On the whole, people are distrustful, disloyal, and generally suspicious of just about anything these carriers do. The reasons are fairly obvious, from their cruel pricing structure designed to charge you for every kilobyte or nanosecond of use, to their requirement that you lock yourself into long contracts before they will give you service. In my own experience, my last month's wireless bill was 18 pages long (and I don't even have a teenager at home).

There have been a few pioneers that are trying a different model, such as Virgin Mobile with their prepaid solutions ... but the world of the wireless carriers still promises much more flash than substance. For examples of this, just look at any recent advertising campaign by these carriers, from the fanfare behind launching the iPhone for AT&T or the wierd city name mashups used by T-Mobile to illustrate how their network would work in places where they vast majority of their customers will never travel. So while watching my DVR last week, when I saw a TV spot featuring the new CEO of Sprint talking in a more human voice about how they are simplifying their service, I stopped to pay attention. Here's the ad:

This is not the approach we are used to in America from our cell phone providers. He comes off as genuine and the plan they are offering is as simple as you can imagine. Taking this human approach certainly sets them apart from their competitors. The reason why this is only half of their battle is because alongside this declaration by the CEO and new direction are two other telling videos.  The first is a clearly scripted YouTube video read by an uncomfortable employee talking about what Sprint is "really" like, and the other is from an irate customer who received a bill for $14,000 from Sprint and tried unsuccessfully to get it resolved:

Now in the second case, the customer did ultimately get her problem resolved thanks to it getting reposted on the Consumerist blog, but the damage for Sprint was already done. I love the simple plan they have come up with for customers and the authentic way the CEO is trying to tell the story. The problem is that consumers are likely to see it alongside other examples of exactly the opposite. It seems to be a case study in how advertising alone cannot reshape an industry or a brand. Without combining it with a smart strategy for social media and word of mouth, the best laid brand messages will likely fall on deaf or disbelieving ears.

10 Questions About "Accidental Branding" With David Vinjamuri

Today I'm trying an interesting experiment with another author, David Vinjamuri. We are doing mirror interviews and posting them at the same time - so he asked me 10 questions about PNI and I asked him 10 about his new book called Accidental Branding. Aside from both being in the midst of the same challenge of marketing our books, once I read his book I realized we approach marketing in very similar ways as well.  David is the founder of ThirdWay Brand Trainers and a Professor at NYU and has been kind enough to help sponsor a session on Personality Not Included that I will be speaking at from 7 to 9pm in downtown NY on May 14th. In addition to talking through the ideas in the book and taking questions. I'll also be revealing a few secrets about the book and promotion strategy that I haven't talked about at all before ... so it should be a good event if you happen to be in NY.  Tickets are still available and if you register TODAY, you'll get a FREE COPY OF Personality Not Included!

Anyway, enough with the promotion - without further ado here are my 10 questions with David Vinjamuri, Author of Accidental Branding, and his great answers ...

1. First of all, I love the premise of your book and how complementary our theories are (Chapter 2 PNI is titled "The Accidental Spokesperson")!  How did the idea for writing Accidental Branding come to you?

Thanks!  The idea came from a class on branding I was teaching at NYU in 2005.   I was teaching marketing professionals who did not have MBAs or a marketing background.  They seemed intimidated by the Harvard and Wharton MBAs working next to them as well as the elitism of brand management as a profession.  I asked them to write a paper about someone who had built a large brand from scratch without an MBA or classic marketing training.  My thought is that it would give them a little motivation for their careers.  The results were intriguing and two of the papers – on Roxanne Quimby (the Burt’s Bees founder) and John Peterman (the J. Peterman founder) gave me the idea for this book.

2. I can imagine some readers may take the premise of Accidental Branding to mean that success is not under their control - are they right?

“Accidental Branding” really refers to the fortuitous accident that most entrepreneurs experience when they realize that there is a problem that they experience and that they can solve it.  This can be Gary Erickson choking on a PowerBar and deciding he can make something that tastes better or Julie Clark failing to find a video with classical music and poetry for her baby girl and deciding to create one herself.   The brand positioning is accidental because it’s done instinctively in that moment.   I do not mean to imply that success itself is an accident.  It clearly takes some hard work and I don’t think it is coincidental that all of the entrepreneurs I profiled did some of the same things along the way.   However, it has to be said that any great success requires a certain amount of luck and that is beyond anyone’s control.  But all of the luck in the world will not help you if you are not prepared for it.

3. How did you narrow down and select the entrepreneurs and business people that you chose to include in the book?

I was looking for recognizable brands started by an entrepreneur without an MBA or classic marketing experience who had run the brand personally for 10 years or longer and who were solving their own problem when they created the brand.  Beyond that, I had to find people who were willing to spend time with me.  There were some great entrepreneurs – like Fred Carl at Viking Range and Jake Burton at Burton Boards whose schedules just wouldn’t permit the time commitment I needed.  In retrospect I was incredibly lucky to get access to the eight entrepreneurs who are in the book.

4. You have some pretty high profile names that you interviewed.  What is the secret to getting onto some of these people's calendars and getting them to agree to meet you and be profiled in the book?

Roxanne Quimby was asked this question at the Accidental Branding launch event at NYU.  She said that I was very polite but also incredibly persistent.  It’s a fine balance.   I worked very hard to get the entrepreneurs to meet with me.  I did not have special access to any of them, so I had to find them through public sources.  Once I met with them it was much easier to get them to commit more time.  I didn’t get everyone I wanted (my original list included Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam and Oprah) but I did get more than half of the people I contacted.

5. Did you draw more upon your teaching experience or on your brand training experience when writing the book?

I actually tried to step away from both and just be a writer and reporter.  I wanted to bring as little baggage as possible to the brands I was writing about.  Only when I was done writing all of the chapters on the entrepreneurs did I step back and think about it as a trained marketer.  That’s probably the strength and weakness of the book – it is very focused on the stories of the entrepreneurs.   My training background definitely came into play in Chapter 2 – where I lay out the rules for Accidental Brands.  I spend a lot of time in my professional life thinking about how to communicate best practices, so I drew on that experience.

6. One of the things that people often say about writing a book is that it lets you charge more for what you do - is that the case and has that been your experience, or are you expecting it to be your experience?

That’s a good question, and I don’t really know the answer yet.  I am very fortunate to run a brand marketing training business that has done very well in the past few years.  I decided that for the three months of April, May and June I would not charge for speaking engagements on Accidental Branding.  My training business, ThirdWay Brand Trainers, and clients like American Express and Starwood Hotels gave me the luxury of doing that.   I do plan to do paid speaking, but I’ve been most focused on trying to get my book into the hands of people who will actually read it and in the short term I regard speaking as a high-quality sampling opportunity; the chance to get people interested in reading Accidental Branding.   I will probably do more speaking and writing and less training as time goes on but I’m lucky to be working with some great trainers who can pick up my slack.

7. You and I both chose to go with large publishers for our books instead of self publishing.  Why did you choose to do it this way, and what advice would you give to aspiring authors about choosing one method or the other?

There are some great success stories in self-publishing but it requires a greater time commitment from the author to get distribution for the book.  I do sense that the publishing industry is changing and I now read 80% of my books on an e-book reader, so I suspect that the rules may be very different in a couple of years.  Either way, if you’re not a celebrity and you are a first time author you had better be prepared to figure out how to market your book on your own.  Most publishing houses are set up like venture capital firms.  They make a lot of small bets on authors and need just a few to succeed.  They don’t devote many resources to each new business book author.

8. One thing I realized after writing a book is that because my last name starts with a B, PNI might often be on the top shelf out of reach from some people.  You'll probably have the opposite issue, given your last name starts with a "V" . have you seen any issues with book placement on shelf so far?

Shelf placement has been very random.  I have been both at tiptoe and ankle level!  I was frankly just relieved to be stocked at Barnes & Noble and Borders at all, since a lot of business books never get that far.  The reality is that it takes at least a year for most unknown authors to build the buzz necessary to start selling well from book stores.

9. What is the single best thing about being an author for you?

Writing! Sounds crazy, but I’ve wanted to be a writer as long as I can remember.  I just looked at my eighth grade yearbook and I confidently predicted I would be writing novels in ten years.  That did not quite happen, but I’m finally writing professionally now!

10. What makes Accidental Branding a success for you?  Is it sales, distribution, buzz, or something else?

I have been thrilled by the attention the book has gotten so far.  The best part has been some of the conversations I have had with entrepreneurs who are building their dreams.  What will make the book a complete success is if I build an audience that is interested in reading another book from me.  I also hope that the buzz from the book will persuade other people and businesses I want to write about to give me the access I need to tell their stories.

Any other questions for David?  Feel free to ask them here ...

Johnny Bunko And The Anatomy Of A Great Business Book

One of the best discussions I managed to make it to at SXSW was also one of the smallest ... a talk by Daniel H. Pink (author of A Whole New Mind) all about the rise of Manga.  It is a topic I am particularly interested in because there is an entire passage in PNI all about it, but Dan's cover article for Wired magazine was one of the pieces of reporting that really put the Manga phenomenon into terms that Americans could understand.  For those unfamiliar with Manga, it is essentially a form of graphic novel that is hugely popular in Japan and growing in popularity across the rest of the world.  He shared some interesting stats about Manga, in particular that 22% of all reading material in Japan is produced in Manga format. 

In the US, the adoption of Manga as a form of literature, fiction and fantasy has been steadly on the rise ... yet, the interesting thing Dan focused on in his session was just how pervasive the form may become as a method of relaying business ideas.  His new book, called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko:The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need is a career advice manual for just about anyone who wants to find a better direction for their career.  In a brilliant move for pre-promotion of the book (which officially comes out in April), he gave a free copy to all the attendees of his early talk (10am the Sunday morning after Daylight Savings Time).

As an author, one of the biggest things that I took away from his talk was that the anatomy of a great business book is changing.  There are two types of business books, tactical and strategic.  Tactical books are a waste of time, because people are seeking that information online.  If you want to learn how to do just about anything, there is bound to be a more recent resource online for it.  So the idea of producing these tactical kinds of books on how to do something aren't worth it.  The thing to focus on, instead, is a book that presents a strategic theory and proves to someone why they should care.  Those are the kinds of books people buy and share.  I totally agree with him, though my book does fit into both categories because of the two part approach.  The anatomy of a great business book means first and foremost to be strategic.  Amen to that ... and definitely go and buy The Adventures of Johnny Bunko today (buy it from The Ultimate Marketing Bookstore and all proceeds will go to Donor's Choose).  No matter where you are in your career, you'll get something out of it.

Product Review: ThinkCube and Fostering Creativity in the New Year

A big part of my job is about creativity.  Coming up with ideas to help our clients stand out, and trying to add new thinking to every new engagement.  As much as I appreciate the role of creativity in a place like a creative marketing agency that I work in ... I also realize that for many people, creativity seems like something that is not part of their roles.  Thinking "out of the box" probably seems pretty far away if your "office" is a cube.  Of course, we all need to be creative in how we approach our jobs and thinking differently about how we complete tasks.  This is one type of creativity and it is super important.  The other type, however, is the kind that many people believe they can't do.  It is the act of thinking about a business challenge and coming up with a creative solution.  Creativity in marketing is intimidating to a lot of people.  In our own agency, we have spent a lot of time trying to foster creativity within every level of our group, from those who consider themselves "creative" to those who see their roles as being about anything else (from fulfillment, to management).  Like most other groups, we have a strong process when it comes to things like delivering a project.  Creativity often seems like a far less disciplined activity. 

Sometimes it is not so easy to find the right way to do that, without resorting to the often ridiculed "creativity sessions" that the new IBM "Stop Talking.  Start Doing." campaign ads mock so effectively.  Several months ago while doing research for my book, I got in contact with Kes Sampathar, an entrepreneur from Boston who started a company called Metamemes.  He sent me a demo of a new game he had conceived to help teams get more creative, called Thinkcube.  The game outlines a process of creative thinking meant to get people to "thinkcubate" more effectively on ideas and drive innovation within their organization either individually or in teams.  Encouraging creativity from a team is something everyone seems to want to do, but few have the right answers on how to do it.  The central problem, in many cases, is that many people tend to see creativity as an inherent skill ... you are either born with it and come up with ideas quickly, or you aren't.  The truth is that innovation and creativity can be fostered from just about anyone.  If finding more creativity in the new year was one of your big resolutions, picking up a ThinkCube might be a great place to start.

Process of "Thinkcubating" (click to enlarge):

The Best Marketing Book You've Never Read

One day I am going to write a screenplay.  I used to write plays, but to finally write a screenplay and try to sell it to Hollywood is a great ambition of mine that I will probably chase one day.  But this blog is most definitely about marketing and not screenwriting.  So why bring up my Hollywood ambitions?  I'm glad you asked. The main reason is because I recently discovered that one of the best marketing books that I have ever read just got a sequel ... and they are both probably titles that you have never heard of, because they are not marketing books at all.  The first and second book are both called Save the Cat! - but have different subtitles, and each is focused on helping screenwriters to create, market, and sell their script in Hollywood. 

The author, Blake Snyder, is a highly successful screenwriter himself and subtitled his first book "The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need."  It's not an exaggeration.  Since that time, the book has gone on to be a best seller and has become the basis for screenwriting courses at Cornell University.  Blake just published a "sequel" called Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: The Screenwriter's Guide to Every Story Ever Told which I ordered a few days ago and am waiting for Amazon to deliver so I can get into it.  But why am I recommending a guide for screenwriters to you for marketing?

For one thing, because his first book provided a lot of inspiration for me as I wrote Chapter 4 of Personality Not Included last month (you'll know what I mean soon) and the book overall is one of the more brilliant insider books about any industry that I have come across.  He has a blog too and his latest post is a brilliant piece of irony about the next version of his screenwriting software which uses his formulaic approach to help aspiring screenwriters follow the proven model to selling their screenplay. 

If you have any interest in improving your marketing writing, understanding more about how the Hollywood marketing machine works, or just grabbing an entertaining book that will offer some useful marketing and storytelling ideas - I highly recommend picking up the first Save The Cat!  Especially because now that the sequel is out, you had better get cracking on the first ...

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Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!

Three Simple Words And Three Sites Every Marketer Should Read

There are a lot of resources out there for marketers.  We read books and blog posts and articles and magazines and podcasts and video blogs and ... well, let's just say the list goes on and on.  Like a lot of people in our industry, I follow a lot of links and have a lot of opinions that I respect.  One of these days, I plan to publish my must read list of blogs, but I have to confess that this list is not as static as you might think.  There are many times when my reading pattern tends to be visiting a favourite blog of mine once a week due to client workload or my travel schedule, even though I wish I could read them more often. 

Still, when it comes to the usefulness of the marketing content that I read, there is some that is mostly about new ideas or news in the industry.  In fact, that's the category that most of it fits into.  There are three sites, however, that stand out because they are in a different league.  The reason is because instead of ideas, they offer tangible real case studies of what brands are doing and how effective it is.  Those sites are WOMMA, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa.

If these three sites are not on your reading list, you need to add them.  For any practicing marketer, the lessons you will get from the cases here will likely offer you pieces of information that you will not only find useful, but just might give you the reasons for your peers to envy your level of knowledge and new insights.  For example, a recent MarketingSherpa article (open access until tomorrow - 09/18/07) pointed out that the three most effective words for getting people to read more of an article were "click to continue."  Not "continue to article" or "read more" but the option with the word "click" in it.  I didn't know that, but now that I do - you can bet we will be using this information in our email marketing work.  That's the power of reading case studies like this.  They give you actionable insight and also great information to justify doing something or a benchmark to evaluate performance.  I love ideas and innovation, but sometimes what you really need is a good case study.   

Book Review: The Four Hour Workweek

Time management is not an easy skill to learn.  We all struggle everyday with finding the right amount of time to do all these things we need to do, and along the way we are bombarded with advice.  Much of it falls into cliche advice like finding time for what's "really important" in your life.  Tim Ferriss, however, has a different kind of advice to offer you in his new book, The 4 Hour Workweek.  Based on his life experiences at the age of 29, Ferriss offers useful advice on topics like outsourcing your life, creating a "low information diet," getting your boss to value performance over presence and taking "mini-retirements."  Each on its own represents an interesting way of looking at life ... but together the form the premise of his promise to you that a 4 hour workweek might be well within your future.  A friend of mine celebrated his 30th birthday yesterday, and in an effort to make him feel old - I picked up a book called "When I was Your Age ..." which has a list of accomplishments from people for every age.  So, for example, you can learn from the book that at age 13 Bill Gates first learned to program a computer.  In the book, for the age 29, the notable fact was the Ann Boleyn lost her head.  At age 29, Tim Ferriss has done infinitely better by publishing The Four Hour Workweek. 

I first met Tim at the SxSW show and have been following his efforts for the last two months, and reviewed an advance version of the book.  Now that it has launched, it quickly rocketed to nearly making the Top Bestseller list on Amazon  (its currently #11).  If you are interested at all in working less, getting more, and streamlining your life - you need to get this book.  Tim also publishes some great ongoing thoughts on his personal blog at www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog.