Influential Marketing Blog

Inside Lenovo's Olympic Blogging Program

This past week in the string of posts about the book coming out, I've been stockpiling ideas for "real" blog posts and wanting to write about them more and more. Thankfully now that I launched the Personality Matters blog, I will post most of the updates about the book there and refocus on marketing strategy and insights here. I can't promise I won't share the occasional post about the book ... but I know that you're giving me your time to read this blog because you want marketing ideas and you want lots of them. So this post is about one I'm particularly excited about.

The Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence team recently finalized the details to take the lead on what I would have to call my dream project. Those who know me know that I am what you might call a full on Olympic enthusiast. I went to college in Atlanta and was there for the 1996 Olympics. I moved to Sydney in 1998 and lived there during the Sydney Olympics, and my first son was born right in the middle of the Athens Olympics (during the women's marathon, ironically). So I've been there and seen it, and more importantly, I think it is a world stage that nothing else even comes close to.

Which brings me to this very ambitious project that we are helping Lenovo with. David Churbuck, our main client, posted about the idea behind the project on his blog and it is a brilliant summary of a big vision that Lenovo and David himself has for this project. Here it is in a nutshell:

The Problem: Media coverage of the Olympics has become about melodrama that is broadcasted as "real" stories. But those producers only choose the athletes who have overcome quadruple knee surgery and the lack of a college degree to become a world champion ... in other words, the extreme stories.

The Insight: What about the real athletes who spend every day training and working hard just to get to the Olympics whether they have a shot of winning or not?  Their voices could be the most powerful and this Olympics more than any other promises to offer the chance for them to do that.

The Project: We are seeking 100 potential Olympic athletes from around the world to all start and maintain a blog all about their experience leading up to and during the Games. In return, Lenovo is offering all participants the chance to use a new IdeaPad laptop for their blogging and help from our team to set up and maintain their blogs. 

This is a big project on a scale that is completely global, multi-lingual and very ambitious. Lenovo, to their credit, are not content to sit back with their sponsorship of the Olympic Torch Relay and Olympic Village (already considerable efforts) and call it a job well done.  If this is the year for Olympics 2.0, this program should be one of the best examples of it. Our main goal right now is finding Olympic athletes, so if you know any (or you happen to be one), please get in touch with myself rohit [dot] bhargava [at] ogilvypr.com or David.

Everywhere Mag and the Arrival of the User Generated Magazine

As someone passionate about travel and the travel industry, I pay a lot of attention to sites that are out there.  Travel has long been an active industry online, whether you talk about people's behaviour with increasingly booking travel online, or the slate of review and opinion sites that let people share their opinions about travel destinations. From Yelp to Driftr to Dopplr there are new travel sites that let you do just about anything you want and they are all great ... yet none have quite found the right formula to harness the one thing that travel enthusiasts like me all have in common: a passion for talking about travel and sharing my experiences.

Sure, I could post a review on Yelp or publish my own travel blog - but what about something a bit more ... substantial?  Something that I get a bit more credit for.  Travel magazines are usually substantial in that way because they do manage to capture the wanderlust that characterizes many travel enthusiasts and offer a real experience you can hold in your hands.  The problem is, very few of them build on the great content being created by individual travellers online because they have a professional editorial staff to do it for them.  Everywhere Magazine is a publication composed entirely of user generated content.  Every month, the editors select the best articles and photos (based on their editorial team and a system of voting on their website) and lay out a new magazine. This is brilliant for a number of reasons, but most specifically the costs they save on hiring a staff of writers and paying their expenses is put into the production of the magazine which is every bit as professional and beautiful as any other travel magazine likely to be on your coffee table. 

I joined the community and have several ideas for articles that I am just itching to write about, because they relate to places or things that I experienced and am passionate about, or tips for travelling better.  Either way, it will be interesting to see if this model of a completely user generated magazine could work in other industries.  Is this unique to travel because of the passion people have for writing and photography in this category, or could it work for any industry?  Anyone seen other examples?

Lufthansa Proves Sweden Is Full of Gorgeous Blondes

Typical marketing advice says that you should never focus on marketing your category, but instead focus on what makes your service distinct from your competitors.  Marketing an industry or type of service is usually a losing proposition because even if you convince someone they need something, you have not convinced them that they need to get it from you.

In the travel industry, this lesson is somewhat different.  Today American travellers are increasingly choosing destinations outside of Europe for their vacations because of the weak dollar against the Euro.  Europe needs to find a way to get its appeal back and Lufthansa (an airline with many of the most frequented routes from the East coast to Europe) is helping the cause with a smart new campaign called Rumor Travels at www.rumortravels.com.  The site offers a few videos focused on three of the greatest rumors about great European countries:

1. Sweden is full of hot blonde women - Watch Video
2. Germany has beer everywhere for every meal - Watch Video
3. France is full of lovers who cannot stop kissing each other - Watch Video

The videos are meant to visualize silly stereotypes and all end with the compelling tagline, "you'll never know if you don't go."  There is a contest on the site where users can submit their own videos to win 2 business class tickets to Europe and a new Sony digital video camera.  Strategically, the campaign works on on several levels:

1. Demonstrates the necessity of travelling in a world of increasing virtual experiences.
2. Positions Europe as the ideal destination to travel for challenging your preconceptions (something people may usually associate with other more "exotic" destinations)
3. Targets the young, professional and single travellers (who will likely be least deterred by the negative exchange rate between Dollars and Euros)

Of course, it doesn't hurt that each video features attractive people and focuses on the romance of travel.  Europe, romance, professional, single ... you get the picture.  This campaign seems like it would work - if only Lufthansa was doing any perceptible amount of marketing around it.  I read about the campaign on Adrants and most of the less than 20 blogs that are listed on Technorati as linking to the campaign come from people reading about it on Adrants.  Even the Lufthansa US homepage only features a blurb on their promotion with Iron Chef instead of any links to the RumorTravels.com site.  The video views on YouTube are still super low, and the contest ends in just 2 days.

As far as I can tell, it seems like a classic smart, strategic and engaging campaign that will ultimately underperform and fade into obscurity because the team behind it was unable to coordinate enough marketing support from whomever controls the ad budgets for Lufthansa.  If anyone has insight into the campaign, please share.  I would love to be wrong on this one ...

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!

What You Can Learn From Philatelic Marketing

Raise your hand if you know what philately is.  OK, major geek points for you if you got it right.  For the rest of you, philately is the fancy name for the study of stamps, commonly related to the hobby of stamp collecting.  Last weekend I was in Lima for a good friend's wedding and passed a post office that shared the following tidbit which my (limited) spanish was surprisingly good enough to translate:

More than 25% of the entire population of the world has collected stamps at one time in their life.

Whether you believe that statistic or not, stamp collecting has been a hobby passed down from parent to child and a way that millions of children have learned about the world.  I admit, I collected stamps as a kid.  In fact, the first place I learned the Sverige was Sweden, Magyar meant Hungary, and how to spell India in Hindi was from stamps.  It was a way of travelling around the world while staying put, learning about obscure countries that seemed made up (seriously, is there really a Leichenstein?) and surprisingly, it also turned out to be a way I learned about business.  My brother and I used to check out the stamp pricing guide from the library and be amazed at how much we were worth.  Along with my Topps Art Monk rookie NFL card, my total net worth was more than $50 before I hit the age of ten.  Thankfully, I've nearly doubled it since then ...

But jokes aside, what is the power of stamp collecting that drives countries around the world to still use stamps as a key marketing tool for their countries?  In some small countries, the revenues from printing the selling their stamps to collectors around the world is a significant source of income.  It's like printing your own money, almost.  Here are a few reasons why I think stamp collecting has remained such a popular activity:

• Captures the moment - Stamps are all limited issue, and when you get them with a postmark, they very clearly capture a singular moment in time.  Because of this, they feel like a historical record.  In fact, many stamps are even called "commemorative."  The stamps I picked up in Peru are different to the ones you would get if you went a few months from now.  That makes my collection unique.
• Offers a global universality - Just about every country has postage and mail, and therefore every one has stamps.  You may not find shot glasses or little spoons, or all the other things people collect in every country, but you will always be able to get stamps.
• Has a real value - Every stamp has a real value associated with it, and is usually worth more over time.  When you buy one, the amount you paid is usually printed on it.  The value is therefore very obvious, and makes it feel significant.  You might throw away other souveniers or things you pick up while travelling, but few people ever throw away a stamp.  It just feels like throwing away money.
• Always changing - Every year, countries issue many different designs of stamps.  More recently, these stamps mirror recent events, are released in interesting sets and come in all shapes and sizes.  As a result, there is plenty of variety.  Stamps are colorful, plentiful and always different. 

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.  People there don't send that much mail.  The stamps are just a smart hook that makes sense because it offers something unique to travelers.  It's no wonder at least everyone's tried it at least once.

VibeAgent, Travel Reviews and An Idea For TripCellar.com

I stay in a lot of hotels.  For personal trips, as well as business travel ... there are hotels that I visit once or twice and there are hotels that I stay at often enough to recognize several members of the staff.  Though I often choose Starwood properties because of location and frequent staying points, I use many different brands of hotels depending on the city and availability.  Recently I have been considering starting a travel blog to capture all of these experiences at hotels, as well as my passion for some other elements of the experience such as luggage.  I have written before and done a product trial for some Briggs & Riley luggage, and also own some Boyt and Tumi bags.  I love to uncover new travel gadgets or tools to make the travel experience better or easier.  When I found the card for the travel survey from DHL in my latest issue of BusinessWeek, I went and took the survey.  I take a ton of photos of food at restaurants and love food photography.  In short, I'm an engaged traveller ... exactly the kind that many companies in the travel business would love to reach. 

So when I got the chance to beta test a new site dedicated to a new way of rating and finding hotels called VibeAgent, I took them up on the offer.  The site is still in beta so some things like the site search and autodiscovery of location during registration were still a bit clunky, but once inside the site it was clear the VibeAgent intends to take on one of the biggest problems with posting online reviews ... that people are way more likely to post when they have a negative experience than a positive one because of a lack of incentive to share a good experience.  The incentive to share a bad experience is obvious: revenge.  I stay at good hotels that I like all the time, and hardly ever review them on a site like TripAdvisor or Yelp.  I have accounts to both, but there is no real incentive to write and the process seems like a bit too much work. 

For me, the number one incentive to keep track of where I stay is so that I can create an archive of my trips for myself.  In part, this was the reason I started blogging ... to keep track of great ideas I saw or had that might be lost otherwise.  Luckily for me, many of those ideas were useful for others too.  Recording this type of information has to be a personal experience.  Where VibeAgent is most successful is in how they let you record your experience through quick buttons and collect your stays together:

As I used the site, though, I couldn't help but wish for a more holistic way of recording my travel experiences.  A real online trip diary, so to speak, where I could save all the details of my trip so I could refer back to it anytime.  This would NOT be about sharing my travel stories ... since I could already do that by creating my own travel blog or adding photos to a Flickr gallery. 

Instead, the sole purpose of this online trip diary would be to easily record all my experiences, positive or negative, with set criteria.   VibeAgent has a great start on set criteria for hotel stays.  Yet, there are five key elements that make up the entire travel experience: transport, hotel, products, food and sights.  If someone could create a similar tool for travellers to easily keep track of all these elements, that would be a tool worth paying for.  Here is a quick list of features:

• Integration with Google Maps
• Database of hotels, sights and airports to quickly recognize what I want
• Easy rating system for each element
• Ability to link to photos for each, if I have them
• Choose to share ratings or not share and keep private
• Sort ratings together (ie - select hotels, airports and sights to see together)
• Easily printable with easy to read formatting
• Emailable custom pages bringing content elements together
• Travel product reviews with links to online purchasing

If I could choose a site to start on my own, this would be it.  I'd call it TripCellar (like a wine cellar - or something like that) and charge people to use it.  To make it more Web2.0, I could easily drop the "a" and make it TripCellr.com.  If it was really easy to use and offered a unique way to keep track of all your travel experiences, I think it would be a hit.  What do you think?  Would this work, or would it just be another tool struggling for an audience?  Also, if you're interested in trying out VibeAgent, let me know ... I have a few invites left to share.

Why Brand Names Matter In The Travel Industry

If I named my next kid Jeeves, would I be limiting him to a future career as a butler?  What else could someone named Jeeves do?  Most marketers understand that names matter for perception, but what impact can they have on actual performance?  The past several weeks I have had to rent a car from a number of different providers.  Unlike airlines or hotels, where the points I rack up tend to provide a significant incentive to stick with one particular brand ... when it comes to car rental I am completely disloyal.  For work, I use Hertz because booking with my corporate card, the insurance is automatically included and I get the fast gold service.  That is a really significant benefit, because it gets me to rent a car from a brand that I have disliked for a very long time.  Someday I'll likely share my disaster stories with Hertz - but this post is about something else. 

For personal use, my first choice is Avis because I have always gotten good service from them.  If the price is relatively equal, I will always pick Avis - as I did this past weekend in Denver.  Otherwise, I will go for the cheapest possible car in the right style.  Two weeks ago in Detroit, this was how I ended up with an awful experience using Thrifty.  All of these rentals got me thinking about the brands I would choose and recommend to others and those I wouldn't.  J.D. Power ranks all the major car rental agencies (with the exception of Payless which is apparently so bad it didn't make their 2006 survey at all).  Enterprise is the consistent winner for overall customer satisfaction, as the chart at left shows (click chart to enlarge) - but more interesting is the ranking of the brands.

Did you notice that all of the bottom ranked brands have names associated with how cheap they are: Budget, Thrifty, Dollar, and Payless (not even ranked).  When your brand name tells your customers that you aim to compete on price, they are unlikely to expect anything more than the cheapest rate.  Imagine if other industries did this.  Hotels don't ... they are named after real people like J.W. Marriott, Conrad Hilton or Berthold Kempinski.  Airlines choose nationalistic, geographic or patriotic names - like United, American, Air China or Singapore Air.  Even in the low fare category - hotels have brands like Red Roof Inn or Comfort Inn and airlines pick names like Southwest and JetBlue.  Each often competes on price, but none brands itself that way.  When it comes to travel, cost is obviously a concern ... but leading with it as your core selling point and brand doesn't seem to be working.  When choosing your brand name, it pays not to confuse a key selling point with the essence of your entire brand.

New York's Papaya Branding Problem

If I gave you two words, papaya and new york (ok, three words), what would you think of?  If you are American, chances are these odd combination of words would conjure up images of hot dogs known as "papaya dogs," which are as iconic as you can get about American pop fast food culture.  The only problem is, there are three different places to get them ... Papaya King, Gray's Papaya and Papaya Dog:

Now which one is the real authentic papaya dog?  It really doesn't matter.  When you have something as distinctive as papaya dogs, the name and experience alone should be enough to make you stand out.  And it does ... until two others come along and open the same business with the same things that make them as unique as you.  When everyone is unique for the same thing no one is.

Papaya King was the first, originally serving just tropical fruit drinks (hence the name papaya) and later expanded into hot dogs.  The other competitors came later, leading to the confusing papaya dog situation in NY today.  Now only the true connoisseurs know the difference and choose one over the other.  For everyone else, one papaya dog is as good as another.

Photo Credits:
Papaya Dog - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmikeym/250937868/
Gray's Papaya - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gatsbye53/885417808/
Papaya King - http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/244963908/

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Behind the Scenes At The Battle of Kruger

One of the hottest videos on YouTube this past year is the Battle at Kruger video featuring the amazingly watchable battle of lions, crocodiles and buffaloes on a Safari.  The video is nearing 8 million views in just a few months, and is an obvious prediction to take over the crown from the Free Hugs campaign for video of the year in 2007.  Chad Hurley, founder of YouTube, even pointed it out as his favourite video at the recent Webby Awards.  Here it is in case you haven't seen it:

A good friend of mine from college, Jason Schlosberg, was one of the pair behind the Internet phenomenon which was just featured as the lead video on NBC News' new program, i-Caught (which premiered last night).  The show is just one amongst several others that features popular online viral videos, but takes the slightly different approach of featuring the stories behind the videos and how they were made and why there were uploaded.

Watching the show, and seeing my friend and his story, the most interesting part was when they interviewed a pair of videographers who had been shooting video and documentary footage for 25 years.  The pair listed off all the hardships they had gone through, from suffering malaria to dealing with near desert climates.  And they had never witnessed a moment like the Battle at Kruger.  This is the next evolution of the funniest home videos.  It's no longer enough to capture moments of extreme stupidity (staged or real) on grainy footage.  The new age of amateur content creators are capturing once in a lifetime moments that even the professionals watch with envy.  Welcome to the new world of media.

The Not-So-Secret Way Virgin America Will Reinvent US Air Travel

Virgin is not in the business of music.  Or credit cards.  Or mobile phones.  Or space travel.  Though the brand has done remarkably well in translating its popularity from one business to the next - they are actually in the business of reinventing stagnant industries.  Just look at the track record of industries that they have entered and how they have done it.  Last week they announced the newest business they will try to reinvent, now that they finally have their long awaited approval in the US to start a new domestic airline.  A visit to www.virginamerica.com proves that they are already applying the "virgin way" to their business and standing out before any of their flights actually take off.  How can they do this?  Are they just smarter at marketing than the rest of the industries they enter?  Their "secret" is actually quite simple: they look at an industry that is doing everything the same way, identify the pain points for customers of all companies in that industry, and focus their business on doing those things differently.  For Virgin America, this means doing the following:

1. Having a unique personality.  With the exception of JetBlue and perhaps Southwest, few domestic airlines in the US could be accused of having an authentic and unique identity.  Virgin America uses elements from the subtle to the explicit to demonstrate their personality.  The cabin has "mood lighting" that changes throughout the flight.  The site lays out a promise to travelers on how Virgin America will treat you.  And, of course, the Virgin brand carries a certain inherent personality of irreverance and hipness that many consumers can connect with.
2. Enable traveller's gadgetized lifestyles. Every seat has a power plug for laptops, USB chargers for MP3 players, and will eventually have built in ethernet for internet access.  For longer coast to coast flights, this ensures that no matter which class of service you are travelling in, you will never run out of batteries on your device.
3. Eliminate the hand signals and call button etiquette problem. It can sometimes be nearly impossible to get a stewardess' attention on the flight and somehow it just seems rude to ring that call button all the time and expect them to come running.  Virgin America has an online ordering system where you can order your food and pay through a cashless system (also removing the need to carry around cash or exact change). 
4. Discounts without the discount airports.  One of the most frustrating things about "discount" airlines is that many of them use obscure airports like Sarasota or Buffalo.  So far, Virgin America flies from DC to LAX and SFO.  All big airports, all places that are not inconveniences to fly to or from.
5. Connect with fellow passengers. One of the saddest parts of travelling sometimes is that you can sit next to someone for 6 hours or more and never speak.  The greater tragedy is that there may be other people on the plane hungry for a good conversation, but simply sitting next to the wrong people.  Built into the back of seat console is something Virgin calls a "seat to seat chat."  Presumably, it only works for passengers who put their seats into "discoverable" modes, but a very cool idea nonetheless.

 

Rohit Bhargava: Social Media Today Podcast Just Launched!

Last week I was invited to do a podcast interview as part of the Social Media Today Weekly Podcast series being put together by Maggie Fox.  I am part of a group called the Social Media Collective which is a group of bloggers that write often about social media and it's impact on business and marketing.  Our content is republished on the Social Media Today site and it is a wonderful collection of writers and thinkers in the social media space.  During my brief conversation with Maggie, we had a good dialogue about the future of blogging, social media marketing, effective techniques and a few thoughts about social media optimization.  You can check out the podcast on the original site or on Maggie's Blog, or you can download it direcly from here. 

Westin Offers Widgets For Renewal In New Website to Launch Tuesday

Starwood is continuing their emerging focus on creating iconic lifestyle brands out of the multiple hotel chains they own with a new website called "Find Renewal" that will officially launch and be announced this Tuesday.  Marc Schiller, CEO of Electric Artists and fellow blogger pointed me to the new site, one of several efforts for Starwood that his team has helped launch.  Also on that list have been the recently reopened virtual hotel concept Aloft that was launched in Second LIfe and generated great publicity for Starwood (as well as valuable consumer insights that were used to recently relaunch the hotel in Second Life, as well as fuel the creation of hotel in real life).  Starwood also created a buzz last year with their engaging and perfectly targeted Starwood blog, The Lobby focused on Starwood members and travel enthusiasts.   As a Starwood Platinum member myself, I find the content on the blog to be interesting, timely, and perhaps most imporantly from a marketing sense ... used well as a marketing tool to drive interest in Starwood properties worldwide. 

I have written about Starwood's efforts before, and needless to say - I am a big fan of all that they have been doing with social media and online.  When it comes to the Westin brand, Starwood has typically stayed with a higher class message - choosing to focus on the luxury of the chain and comfort of the beds and room.  Having had the pleasure (once) of being upgraded in the Westin New York to a top floor room with massage chair in room ... I can certainly attest to this focus being important for the business traveller.  With the new Find Renewal site, Westin gathers a group of six experts in fields from fitness to psychology to participate in their "Renewal Council."  Using spokespersons in this way has been done often as part of PR campaigns, and the site offers content in the way of "tips" written by the panel of experts. 

Unfortunately, many of the tips shared so far fit into the category of fairly obvious cliches - such as "small things make a big impact," or "Get out and exercise even when you don't feel like going ... More than likely, you'll be glad you made the extra effort to get out."  Not exactly advice you'd pay an expert for.  As blog posts, which is how the site is set up, it's certainly not as compelling as The Lobby.  Saving the site, however, is the smart use of a widget to allow people to grab these posts as quotes and bring them into a revolving daily tips feed on their site or desktop.  Used in this way, the content becomes far more compelling in a "daily horoscope" kind of way and offers a method for getting a quick reminder through a tip that I could see people finding useful.  In the end, I think the site does well to brand it's unique experience and further the brand perception of Westin as a great hotel chain to unwind.  You'll have to decide for yourself if the advice they offer is useful or not.

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Flat Whites in DC: Why Thinking Outside Your Region Matters

There is a restaurant in the Washington DC area called Cassatts which is the only location in all of DC where you can get a flat white.  For most people that might not mean much, but for anyone who has lived in Australia or New Zealand, the thought of starting a morning without your flat white (an espresso based coffee drink similar to a latte) is unimaginable.  One of my common complaints about the DC area is that I have yet to find a coffee shop that serves a decent cup of coffee ... but Cassatts stands out for their signature coffee and uniquely Kiwi feel.  Why does Cassatts provide such a compelling experience?  Is it because the coffee just tastes better?  Or is it because they have brought something that is extremely common from another region into a place where they can stand alone?

Imagine the street vendors selling golgappas (also called pani puris) on Chowpatty beach in Mumbai relocated to the streets of San Francisco to offer the same street food to unsuspecting residents.  Or an authentic silver shop from the Taxco region of Mexico located in Philadelphia.  This is about more than importing products from one place to another and reselling them.  Anyone can do that.  Thinking outside the region is more about geographic displacement: bringing a business that is relatively common in one geography into a new location where it offers something unique and different.  Uniqueness is key in creating a story consumers will share with others, particularly when you think about the challenge globally.  Travellers go to far-away places to seek authentic experiences, and often do so because of the reputation of a certain place when it comes to food or products to buy.  If you can capture that experience and bring it to an unexpected place, you can have your own blue ocean.  That's the power of thinking outside the region.

Image Credits:
Rain.Forest Photostream on Flickr
Pani Puri Presentation on SlideShare from Thakkar

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Are You Marketing Your Product Backstory?

Several weeks ago, I noted an interesting story about how Dole is offering "farm codes" printed onto stickers that are placed on organic bananas offering consumers the chance to get to know more about the farm that grew the banana by visiting www.doleorganic.com.  On Dole Organic, you can see such information as a description of the banana plantation, photos of workers, and Google Earth images.  Despite the site's average design and limited functionality (no ability for users to interact with the content or add their voice) - the effort represents a great example of new thinking that product marketers are using to capitalize on the global trend towards ethical consumerism.  As more and more attention is being paid to the manufacturing or acquisition process for products, as well as the carbon footprint behind these processes, offering insight into the backstory for how your product is made is becoming more and more necessary.  Certification programs like Dole's Farm Code effort, or the international movement to create a certification for conflict-free diamonds are just two examples.  Soon, the "Made in Tiawan" stickers so often seen and ridiculed through the 80s and 90s may be replaced by reports on the factory, images from the floors, and interviews with the workers.  Social responsibility and ethical consumerism is not just about buying green products, but also understanding the process that they are created with and choosing based on this information.

Yet product backstories have more potential than just offering environmental or societal impact assessments for products.  Backstories are a cultural trend.  More and more films are taking a different approach to the traditional beginning to end timetable for telling a story.  Lost is perhaps the best example of the rise of the backstory, as the hit television show has used the engaging format of weaving a backstory of one of the show's characters into each episode to allow viewers to learn more about each character.  The backstories fill in the details and deepen the emotional connection of a viewer, or a consumer.  You might say it's a stretch to say we will care more about our bananas after having seen images from the farm ... but on some level, it has an impact.  Having worked with BuzzAgent (a word of mouth marketing company) on a number of campaigns, I know that when it comes to WOM, the backstory is particularly important.  Knowing more about a product or company's origins make you more likely to tell others about it.  In many cases, the backstory becomes the marketing story.  Most marketing today focuses on product attributes and uses or creating a need for consumers to purchase.  What if more of our efforts focused on a product's backstory?  At least one marketer is betting that's the way to sell a whole lot more bananas.

Update (06/06/07): Dole also has a blog about this effort at http://doleorganic.blogspot.com/

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KLM Redefines How an Airline Can Use Social Networks

There is usually only one situation when travelling by air that warrants travellers banding together in a community.  Unfortunately, it is usually when they unite in dissent and outrage about the way they are being treated by airlines.  Apart from the "community" of frequent flyers, the airline industry has typically done a terrible job of fostering social interaction between passengers, which is why often this interaction is happening on communities like FlyerTalk.com.  This and other sites like it are dedicated to travellers sharing tips with one another on how to manipulate the system, travel smarter for cheaper, achieve preferred status in frequent flyer programs faster, or simply talk about the airline industry from a traveller's point of view.  Again, the community is talking around airlines and not with them.

KLM has a different vision, launched through several social networks - including ones targeted at entrepreneurs and business travellers in China and Africa, as well as a robust social network all about golfing where travellers can enter their destinations and scores, use miles to purchase golf related merchandise, and even book golf get togethers with other travellers that happen to be in the same location.  That an airline would launch a social network is interesting in itself.  The way that KLM has done these (and presumably will do others as well) offers some interesting lessons to other struggling airlines on how to better connect with customers by using social networks:

1. Offer what business customers are interested in. If you are going to see mom and dad for a week, you probably won't be interested in social networking with other golfers or business folks.  The beauty of focusing on business interests here is that it is not only more useful, but obviously more profitable for KLM as business travel is where the higher margin tickets are sold.  For that reason, every airline is trying to stand out for business travellers.  But when everyone offer 180 degree flat beds and the same video capabilities - you need to go further.  You need to offer something that no one else has, but that business travellers would be interested in.
2. Capitalize on existing trends (and the underlying meaning). The "trend" of social networks points to the underlying need for people to connect with other like minded individuals.  Every successful social network has some element that allows it's users to do that.  Similarly, KLM has built a structure for the regional sites where travellers can connect with one another based on the (mostly) chance occurence of sharing a flight - or doing business in the same market. The result is that flying with KLM may mean more than a number of frequent flyer points or the simply getting from point A to point B.  Being part of the club is a part of your identity - and the incentive is not a reward (as with frequent flyer points).  The incentive is building your own personal network, finding a new golf buddy and perhaps even doing a new deal or two.
3. Understand what brings travellers together. Passion for a subject, whether it's work or golf is the primary reason, but there is another interesting insight KLM is using to it's advantage here.  For many business travellers (particularly those travelling internationally), there is a familiar moment of recognition and bonding when you find someone else in a strange place who is from where you are from.  It explains the rise of strong expat communities in cities around the world, and the immediate bond with a "seatmate" who comes from the same city, and leaves on the same flight as you to the same destination.  Focusing a social network on helping people to forge that bond is a smart idea.

There is more KLM could be doing - such as integrating these networks more closely into their booking and seat selection process, or offering travellers the chance to bring their networks and invitations into popular business contact sites like LinkedIn.  Regardless, the networks represent a wonderful new step in how airlines foster relationships with their customers and go beyond simply innovating the interior of their business cabins every six months with something new in order to stand out.

(Via SpringWise)

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IdeaBar: Creationstorms

Over the weekend I revisted ShootExperience, a site that has the really interesting premise of getting people together in a single location at a set time to photograph in a community and share images.  Describing their mission as "helping people to rediscover their everyday environment and lives through photography,"  the site has launched the Connective Collective - a project designed to engage photographers across the world to share images around the central theme of WATER.  I love the ambition of this project and the concept behind the site - but the payoff of a Global Exhibition or winning online contests seems surprisingly traditional.  What about using the power of social media to amplify this idea even further?

Essentially, through their series of events - Shoot Experience has introduced what I would call a "creationstorm." A creationstorm is a call for individuals to participate in an event where they create imagery, video or text around a particular theme or topic and contribute it to a single location.  The real power of this concept is in how it amplifies the trend of users creating content by focusing a group of individuals on a specific location or theme within a specific time.  Imagine if all the photographs from the upcoming Shoot Toronto event were not only uploaded online, but also tagged in Flickr and del.icio.us, linked to reviews on Yelp, added to the Wikimapia project, offered as resources for filmmakers at TurnHere, and optimized for image searches on Google and other search engines.  This is the power of creationstorms.

For marketers in the travel and tourism industries, running their own creationstorms could become the key to building rich user generated content around a particular destination and offer hungry travellers images, stories and even video to consume as part of any online travel or entertainment related query.  There are lots of other marketing possibilities with this.  Imagine Starbucks launching their own creationstorm to get consumers worldwide to catalog every Starbucks location into a single gallery (or any retailer for that matter).  Hotel chains, local tourism boards, restaurants and tourist attractions all are other examples of services that could benefit from running their own creationstorms to fill the content void online.  The folks at Shoot Experience are already onto the potential of these creationstorms for corporate clients as team building or as part of PR and marketing activities.  If you amplify this idea with social media, it's easy to see that creationstorms have the potential to ignite the co-creation movement and help marketers harness this force at the same time.

About the Idea Bar:
Working in a creative team, the life of our business is new ideas.  We come up with them every day for clients, but sometimes there are ideas that just don't fit a client.  They are too big, too different, or just not quite right. Inspired by my colleague John Bell, the IdeaBar is a category of posts that are meant to be "open source" and offer new ideas for marketing.  Read more IdeaBar posts on this blog.

Jaman and The New Global Niche

Ethnicity has always been an appealing niche for foreign language newspapers and magazines to local cable television programs.  Restaurants, churches and temples are all centers for exploring global cultures in the real world.  Yet on the Internet, the most successful ethnically focused sites seem to be the online dating sites such as Shaadi.com, JDate and Corazones.com - as well as online communities targeting ethnicities for networking.  The problem with this is that most of these sites are not inviting others outside a particular ethnicity to interact and learn about a culture.  If online networks focused on getting together those of a particular ethnicity, we risk alienating each other as everyone only joins their own ethnic group online and doesn't venture beyond. 

Countering this trend to a degree are sites that take a more global view of the world, targeted at those who consider themselves more than just citizens of a particular country.  There are sites like Worldchanging and GlobalVoicesOnline that offer global news and a collaboration of voices from many countries.  Other online news and video sites offer a more global view on world news and reporting such as Current.tv.  Campaigns such as the One campaign or Product Red are also taking a global view for cause related marketing.  Yet when it comes to sharing the best of global cultures in a way that is not cause related, there are surprisingly few ways people have found to do it online.

One site that I came upon recently which seems to have a different vision is Jaman - a social network and website where you can sign up to rent or purchase foreign films from around the world.  Uniting the world through cinema has long been the charge of many independent film festivals and other such events, but online this mission has not really taken off.  There are strong online communities that relate to film, such as Flixter - but none focus as uniquely on global cinema as Jaman.  The site is still in beta, and the film collection relatively small ... but as more and more global cinema labels sign onto the service and see it as a profitable distribution channel, the collection is sure to grow.  It's one of those sites that is helping to define a new global niche for sites that are focused on bringing the best of global cultures to everyone ... without the necessity for an underlying cause.  After all, even the global citizen who wants to learn about or save the world need some old fashioned entertainment every once in a while.

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Screenshots of Jaman Service (click to enlarge):

     

IdeaBar: The Secret Menu Item

There is a restaurant at the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas called Mr. Lucky's 24/7.  As the name suggests, it's open all the time every day - but that's hardly unique in Las Vegas.  Their menu is like most other menus at cafe restaurants in hotels ... serving the usual entrees coupled with the typical Las Vegas style buffets with every kind of food you can imagine.  In a town like Vegas, it's tough to stand out for food.  But what everyone who has been to Vegas knows about Mr. Lucky's is that there is a special item not on the menu.  The "Gambler's Special" is a plate that includes a steak, three grilled shrimp, a choice of potato or broccoli, and a salad for $7.77 ... and only available for those that know to ask for it.  So here's the question: how many people do you think will go out of their way to get to Las Vegas, go to the Hard Rock Cafe, and make their way to Mr. Lucky's just to order that hidden menu item that is only available to those who know to ask for it?  Based on the reviews, I'm guessing more than a few.  This is the kind of buzz marketing that helps restaurants stand out.  It's the kind of thing people talk about.  It's the kind of thing that makes me dedicate an entire blog post to a restaurant that probably would otherwise be indistinguishable from any other Las Vegas cafe on or off the strip.  Now think outside of the restaurant business.  How much buzz could you drive by offering something outside of your usual "menu" that only the initiated customers knew to ask for?  What could you do with a secret menu item?

About the Idea Bar:
Working in a creative team, the life of our business is new ideas.  We come up with them every day for clients, but sometimes there are ideas that just don't fit a client.  They are too big, too different, or just not quite right.  Inspired by my colleague John Bell, the IdeaBar is a category of posts that are meant to be "open source" and offer new ideas for marketing.  Read more IdeaBar posts on this blog.

The Online Travel Marketing Paradox

There is a problem with every online travel resource out there today - and no one seems to realize it.  Over the past decade, online travel resources have been reinventing how people in the US are planning, booking and organizing their trips - all while the role of travel agents has been redefined and in some cases, made obsolete.  Yet with all these hyperconnected saavy travellers seeking the best deals online and reading every review about a destination or hotel before visiting ... there is a gap for one particular type of traveller.  Online flight booking services and travel aggregators that search multiple sites are great for finding the best deals.  TripAdvisor is perfect for comparing one hotel to another and reading (mostly) real reviews of hotels before choosing one.  But what about the travellers who have not picked a destination?  More importantly, what about those travellers who haven't yet decided where they want to go?

All of us, at some point in our lives fit into this travel category.  We have vacation coming up, we know we want to go to Central America, for example, but don't have the exact destination in mind.  For us, Travelocity, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Expedia or Kayak are of minimal use.  Sure we could read lots of reviews of places or use some new tools like TripAdvisors placewikis to learn about a place.  But who really bases a decision on where to go on that?  For most, it's a combination of knowing about a place, finding a good deal, and reading reviews from others all in a single location.  Right now, assuming I am ready to plan a trip to Central America in April and want the best deal, how would I do it? Pretty much starting at Google, I might follow sites that come up, visit websites from online tourism bureaus, talk to friends and family I know who have been to the region, and even take the old school approach of going to a bookstore or library to flip through some books and look at pictures.  This is one of the few situations in my life where there isn't an online research solution that can help me.  what if there were a site that helped you to compare destinations not just in terms of attractions, but also in terms of costs for airfares and hotels within a specific timeframe.  A site like that, which doesn't base its interface on the assumption that a traveler already knows where he or she is going would carve a new niche in the crowded online travel space.  I personally can't wait to see a site like that ...

IdeaBar: "Beaconvertising" And New Social Media Phones

This post is not about the iPhone.  You might have heard that many people believe the latest innovation from Apple will not only revolutionize the mobile phone industry, but maybe even the future of mobile marketing.  Whether it does or doesn't, in the short term, it's easy to forget that ideas for innovation may come from elsewhere.  The Helio from Samsung is one of those kinds of products.  The interface and look of the phone is not necessarily unique.  Yet built into the phone are a range of smart features, from integrated support for MySpace Mobile, to full screen landscape video viewing.  The feature that I found most interesting, however, was the built in GPS.   

A core feature of this GPS service is something they have called the "Buddy Beacon" - a way of broadcasting your location to friends so you can find one another at any time.  This idea of the beacon is a powerful concept with many other applications.  Rather than most maps which rely on street addresses and turn by turn directions, the beacon can be a marker of location that offers a visual way for someone to find you ... or find a location.  It's a portable homing device.  What if retail stores could use this beacon concept for marketing?  The idea of "Beaconvertising" simply refers to the idea of broadcasting your location to customers in a way that helps them find you in the real world.  Now think about all the situations where as a consumer all you need is the closest location of something.  The closest place to buy diapers - the closest place to rent a movie - the closest place to fix a flat tire ... the list is endless.  These are purchase decisions made lar