Influential Marketing Blog

The 3 Philosophies of Word of Mouth Marketing

Late last week I had the chance to participate as a faculty member at WOMM-U, an engaging event put on by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (which my employer, Ogilvy PR, is a member of).  My role was somewhat unique among other speaking events that I have done - along with Jason Anello from Yahoo!, I was meant to lead six half hour sessions on the topic of "speed trials" of tools in the WOM and social media space.  It was a relatively open topic, discussed in round table formats, however the nice thing about it was that it really gave me a chance to spend some time individually with many of the attendees of the event in a way that I typically don't get.  As a result, I came away extremely excited about the interest level in WOM among top marketers, as well as the common challenges that many of us face. 

As WOM emerges as a notable branch of marketing (and by most reports at WOMM-U, it has already done so with nearly a billion dollars expected to be spent on WOM this year alone), people start to take different approaches to defining it within their organization and to their peers. The most interesting thing for me from WOMM-U was that three core philosophies seemed to emerge for how people were defining word of mouth, and they each have some interesting lessons for you if you are planning to start a word of mouth effort or need to justify one to your boss:

1. WOM is a channel. This is one of the most popular ways of looking at word of mouth marketing, promoted by groups such as BzzAgent and RepNation because of how easy it is to explain to traditional marketers.  When you treat WOM like a media channel, then you can buy and sell it just like you do for TV or Radio or Online Ads. This is a great way to describe it if your audience is people who understand traditional media planning and think in terms of impressions and CPCs. This also plays well to models like BzzAgent where you have a defined pool of people who are measurable because they represent a subset of an audience. It becomes tougher (but not impossible) when you focus on a wider pool of people.
2. WOM is an outcome. A refrain heard from many people at WOMM-U, this was the broader view that WOM should be a core element of all your marketing.  Everything from your TV spots to your online community is driving people to share their experience with others.  Think of this not as "conversion-based marketing" but rather as "conversation-based marketing." When WOM is treated as an outcome of all your acitivities, you can start to think more broadly about what your marketing is doing.  Jeffrey Graham from the NY Times shared an interesting point that you need to think of your newspaper budget (for example) as a WOM budget. Once you do that, there is a whole difference lens you can use on your current marketing (without having to find new budget too!) aa
3. WOM is viral/buzz. This is one of the most common perceptions about WOM, that it is all about having something go viral or building a buzz. At our round table, this question came up frequently. There are indeed some poeple who believe that WOM is all about viral marketing and it is a valid point of view. The way I usually describe the difference is through the importance of belief.  Viral or buzz marketing is all about having one person pass something along to someone else for any quality (not necessarily one that is around the brand). You may pass a viral video about Burger King onto someone else because it's funny, not because you love Burger King. WOM on the other hand, typically involves some kind of belief.

Have you made word of mouth marketing a core element of your marketing strategy?  If so, which philosophy has worked for you to describe and position it within your organization?  And are there any others that are missing?

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.

Be Part Of The Personality Not Included Book Launch On March 28th

There are a lot of ideas for how to launch a book online. As I head toward launching* Personality Not Included this Friday, I've looked at most of them. Some authors create a group and ask all their contacts to all hit an online bookstore like Amazon at one time to create a surge in sales.  Others coordinate big launch events in the real world and aim to use those to propel interest in their book. Bigger books might buy advertising to announce a launch and, of course, there is the old PR method of blasting lots of press releases at people who may or may not be interested in the book. There is one big problem with all these approaches: none of them are very conversational.

A conversation does not start instantly with a big spike and then trail off. A really good conversation builds momentum steadily and eventually turns into something more powerful. So my aim today is not to create a short term spike, but to start a conversation about the central idea of the book - which is that personality matters, and continue it over the next few weeks and months. To jumpstart this conversation, I'm asking for your help - and offering you something in return.

My idea is simple: if you send me five questions that you want to know about the book or personality, I'll write you a response on Friday that you can publish on your blog. Let's call these virtual interviews (ie - interviews by email). You choose whether to post the interview on your blog or not after you get my responses, but I am essentially offering for ANY BLOGGER to send me interview questions and I will respond with answers that are NOT cut and pasted, but specific to your questions. I will send all my responses to you on Friday in the order that I get your questions, and I will link to all the posted interviews on Friday.  On Monday, I'll be running a competition on my blog to let readers vote on the Best Interview. The winner will get a signed copy of my book and a gift certificate for $100 from Amazon. Here are a few reasons you may want to do it:

1. For relatively little effort, you'll get a customized post by me that you can use exclusively on your blog
2. Your blog will be featured in my follow up post compiling all the interviews (getting you more visibility)
3. You have a chance to win a signed copy of my new book and a gift certificate for from Amazon.com if your post is voted "Best Interview" by the readers of my blog.

That's about it. I'll be answering review questions in the order that I get them, so please send me yours soon at rohitaustralia [at] gmail [dot] com and I will add you to the list. If you don't have a blog, you can still ask questions by leaving a comment on this post - there will be a prize for best question from the comments too. For the latest news about the book launch and access to exclusive content which you can't get anywhere else, be sure to join my Facebook group for the book if you haven't already and also follow the launch in real time by adding me to your Twitter follow list (Twitter ID - rohitbhargava), or friending me on Facebook (which republished my updates if you are not a Twitter user).

Update (3/26/08): Up to 25 interview requests in less than 24 hours ... thanks to all the bloggers for your interest - I'm hoping to make it to 50 request by Friday!

* The book bindery date is this Friday, which means the book is complete and printed and they will be shipping out to those who preordered over the weekend or on Monday (so you should have your copy by early next week). The official date when they will be in bookstores across the US and Canada is likely to be around April 14th - and the book will be released internationally about 4-6 weeks after that (across Europe, Asia, Australia). If you have a specific query about your country and when the book will be out, please send me an email and I can let you know.

Notes From the Twitterbowl: The Top 3 Strategic Super Bowl Ads

Last night during the big game, I joined a large group of marketing and social media types to share some live thoughts about the Super Bowl ads through Twitter (sending them to the @superbowlads user account).  The aptly named "Twitterbowl" consisted of lots of folks live rating ads and sharing some feedback about the ads live during the game.  Voting on ads in real time is nothing new ... however doing it and reading the thoughts of my other contacts during the game was an interesting way to experience the ads.  Though I would have expected a more sophisticated commentary from the group as a whole, being marketing people and all.  Many folks seemed to just be rating ads on entertainment value as opposed to whether or not the message actually made sense for the brand, but it was still a fun experience as part of the game.

Aside from realizing that people can really have completely opposite views of what makes a successful Superbowl ad, it was also clear that all of us love to have our opinions.  Everyone decides what is most entertaining for them, but since this is a marketing blog, I'm going to go with my own top 3 Super Bowl ad list based on strategic value for the brand.  So, here is my list of the top three 3 strategic ads that were creative, engaging, messaged properly and could actually have a real impact in terms of sales (and only one of them made the USAToday Top 10 popular ads list):

1. Tide "My Talking Stain":  This spot was easily relatable (everyone has had that stain they couldn't do anything about), funny, and generated awareness for an under appreciated product  In the Twitterbowl, most folks loved it, and it will easily have the recall when anyone is walking the grocery market aisles and sees it.  The only downside?  The word in the Twitterbowl was that their marketing site (www.mytalkingstain.com) went down under all the traffic.
   
2. Under Armour "Under Army":  Any company that is number 3 in a competitive industry has perhaps the most to gain from a Super Bowl ad because it positions them on equal footing with the other two.  For Under Armour, this meant taking the reigns from Nike and Adidas with their "Under Army" spot, which they did brilliantly.  Not to mention it was one of the rare Super Bowl ads that (gasp!) has something to do with football.  Ironically, it wasn't popular in the Twitterbowl - but for the masses and Under Armour's target audience, I think it was spot on.
3. Audi "Godfather": Audi's spot was a big deal in marketing circles before the Super Bowl even aired because it represented a rare entry from Audi into the Super Bowl mix.  The ad itself was a brilliant parody of the Godfather that positioned the new __________ as the ultimate in new luxury.  Anyone want to bet what percentage of the boomer males watching the game were picturing themselves in that car?

Of course, I am tough on these ads because I am putting the often forgotten lens of strategic value over deciding what was a good creative execution.  If we just looked at entertainment value, which I am sure lots of polls are doing today, the winners were probably a few of the Bud ads and the Pepsi Night at the Roxbury spoof.  Worst ads?  They have to be the Gatorade/Vitamin Water/Sobe combos (seriously, can anyone tell them apart?), the CareerBuilder nasty exploding heart ad (they should have stuck with the monkeys), and the singing Comcast ads (which, thankfully, most of the country probably didn't see).  Big props to Dell and Lionel also, for being the only advertiser (that I could tell) to actually be part of the Twitterbowl. 

Oh, and it was a great game to watch too ... congrats to Giants fans everywhere.  If it can't be the Redskins, it might as well be the Giants doing the NFC East proud.

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Ironweed Films and The Secret of Repackaging That Works

Would you join a book of the month club?  How about taking the packaged tour to see the sights at a new travel destination instead of exploring them on your own?  There was a time when I didn't understand why anyone would choose something like that.  After all, if you can have all the fun of seeing a new place for the first time, why pollute it with a watered down tour designed for tourists (the one word no real traveller wants to associate themself with).  The easy thing to think is that packaged options are for amateurs.  And no one wants to be an amateur.  But then I went to the Outback in Australia.  For whatever reason, I ended up on an adventure tour instead of just getting a car and going.  I had already seen the Outback once by car exploring on my own.  This time, with a friend visiting, I took the tour.  Along the way, we took in a wounded kangaroo to drop off at a shelter and slept under a deeply coloured sky turned extreme by all the smoke from bush fires in the air.  Every experience on the tour was one I would not have had exploring by myself. 

The reason why I started with this story is because this weekend I was thinking again about the power of packaging when it comes to marketing an experience.  I spent the day saturday with a great team of people working on the marketing strategy for my coming book launch and one of the things we talked about was how to package the experience.  It got me thinking about the last packaged experience I joined ... a group called Ironweed Films.  The company has a charge to share great (and underappreciated) independent films with their members each month.  It is, essentially, a film of the month club.  What sets their experience apart, though, is that in addition to a single full length film, they also package it with 2-3 other short films and put a custom cover around the DVD.  The result is that you don't just get a single movie every month, you get an exploration of an idea or theme, played out over several films - and even the chance to take action on their website with a related activity for each film collection.  Past topics have included nature, abortion, elections, iraq, and the future of food.  What makes Ironweed Films stand out offers a lot of lessons on how to do repackaging right.  For those of you who have a service that you are looking to package, read these lessons first:

1. Offer added value.  The biggest thing Ironweed does is that they go through all the films out there to pair up films that explore similar themes.  As a result, each month you don't just get a single point of view on an immerssive topic, you get several.  In most cases, unless you were in the industry and looking for these films all the tme, they include films you might never have seen.
2. Don't forget about having your own brand. When you are repacking things from others, it may be difficult to create your own unique and memorable brand.  Where Ironweed succeeds is in designing their own brand that members can associate with.  Everything from the brown paper envelope with purple writing that the DVDs arrive in, as well as the numbering of monthly DVDs (kind of like episodic comic books) to give you the sense that each DVD is a collectible item add to the branded approach.
3. Make it about passion.  There are essentially two models for repackaging items.  The first is to repackage multiple things for convenience or to make more money.  The classic example of that would be those packages of 4 colors of peppers sold in the supermarkets.  It's all about ease for you, and they charge you for it.  The other model, and the one that Ironweed promotes, is building their repackaging around a mission to bring more independent films to more people (a cause they believe in).  As a result, the passion makes the site and service even more appealing.

Aside from my Outback experience, I am still not sure that I am a fan of taking the packaged experience when travelling.  That can still be a pretty inconsistent gamble.  When it comes to repackaging an experience though, Ironweed has a model worth considering.

Blogger Social 2008 and the Art of Personalized Outreach

The first thing I should say is that I was planning to write about Blogger Social 2008 anyway.  You'll see why I started with that disclaimer in a moment ...

Just about everyone in any kind of communications role has probably reach out to at least one blogger at some point to share something of value and ask for a link.  For most bloggers, the greatest value they can offer to someone is to choose to post about something they are doing.  One lesson I have been reminded of time and time again, though, is that sometimes having great and relevant content is not enough.  I was reminded of this fact on two distinct occasions over the past few days.

The first was Steve's recent post on Adrants about how Amber Lee (Obama Girl) created a personalized video for him talking about how much she loves Adrants.  It's a brilliant move by BarelyPolitical.com to create something specifically targeted at Steve and Adrants, as well as a strong relationship builder.  There's a lesson in this for any marketer hoping to build a connection with a highly influential blogger in any industry.

The second was when I started to see lots of anticipation posts from fellow marketing bloggers sharing that there are just 90 days left until Blogger Social 08.  This is going to be a great informal gathering of marketing bloggers and something long overdue.  Organized primarily by marketing bloggers CK and Drew McLellan, the event now has a trailer of sorts, thanks to Mark Goren.  The video features images of all the bloggers attending the event, including me.  Which brings me back to my disclaimer from earlier.  I was planning to write about this event.  The video made it personal again for me and helped propel me to do it sooner rather than later.  It just goes to show, sometimes a bit of personalization (along with a play to blog ego - which we all have) makes the difference between just having great content and getting it talked about:

PS - If you are a marketing blogger, you should definitely consider registering yourself for Blogger Social 08 - it will be in NY on the weekend of April 4th.  Below is the list of just a few marketing bloggers already registered:

Susan Bird Tim Brunelle Katie Chatfield Terry Dagrosa Matt Dickman Luc Debaisieux Gianandrea Facchini Mark Goren Gavin Heaton Sean Howard CK Valeria Maltoni Drew McLellan Doug Meacham Marilyn Pratt Steve Roesler Greg Verdino CB Whittemore Steve Woodruff Paul McEnany Ann Handley David Reich Tangerine Toad Kristin Gorski Mack Collier David Armano Ryan Barrett Lori Magno Tim McHale Gene DeWitt Mario Vellandi Arun Rajagopal Darryl Ohrt Joseph Jaffe Rohit Bhargava Anna Farmery Marianne Richmond Thomas Clifford Lewis Green Geoff Livingston Kris Hoet Connie Reece CeCe Lee Jonathan Trenn Toby Bloomberg Seni Thomas

Announcing The Ultimate Marketing Bookstore

Several months ago I participated in the LitLiberation Blogger Challenge launched by my friend Tim Ferriss to try and raise money for DonorsChoose.org (a site which allows teachers to submit funding proposals to ask for help doing something they don't normally get the funding for).  Around the same time, I started playing around with Amazon Affiliate links and made more than ten bucks on links by just using a few links on several blog posts.  That's only a small amount of money, but it got me thinking about the potential of using an affiliate program to generate money for charity in the marketing world.  Over the time that I was away from blogging, one of my side projects was to start contacting several influential people to see if they would be willing to participate in a new kind of bookstore - which I called The Ultimate Marketing Bookstore.  Today I am launching it (although I will resist the temptation to call it a "Beta launch").  Here's how I described the purpose of the site and what makes it different:

This site is different because it features all the reading lists of marketers that you already know and respect in one place.  From CEOs to marketing directors to top marketing bloggers - The Ultimate Marketing Bookstore lets you see and shop from all their reading lists ... and all for a good cause.

The way most of us find out about great marketing books is the same way that we learn about great products ... through recommendations from people we trust.  Most online bookstores are just categories of books selected by one or two people.  They are great if you trust those people, but they are not comprehensive. 

As I describe above, all the proceeds from affiliate commissions that this site generates will be donated to DonorsChoose.org on a monthly basis and I plan to try and spread the word in the marketing community about this new bookstore and will be adding new names on a weekly basis.  Here are a few reasons why I think this idea can work:

1. Collects a central hub of reading lists from marketers that are currently widely distributed online. 
2. Encourages marketers who are not sharing their reading lists to do so in an easy way.
3. Makes great marketing books easier to find and buy.
4. Creates a community of marketing book readers and allows them to contribute to a good cause
5. Offers a platform for new marketing books to get promoted to an interested audience

That's the initial idea, but I'd love to hear some feedback on what you think could make it better.  I am still reaching out to marketers to add their book lists, so stay tuned in the next few weeks as I will likely be adding lots more names to this list, and I plan to publish updates with money raised and associate this bookstore with a challenge on DonorsChoose.org so the amount raised (and what the dollars are being spent on) is highly visible.  Blog badges and other tools to promote the site are in the works as well.  Any other suggestions?

Note: A big thank you to all the people who responded to my LinkedIn question about which charity could be the best to support for this.  DonorsChoose.org was the most popular suggestion.

Guest Post: Is Word of Mouth a Discipline or Just a Channel?

by John Bell

Rohit has invited a handful of folks to post on his blog while he manages his true key influencers - family (including the newest member!). It only seems fitting that each of us post on what we care about most. In my case, that's word of mouth marketing.

My team uses digital marketing, social media and traditional strategy to amplify and activate word of mouth all to support our clients business objectives. While I love social media and it is a part of all of our work and personal digital lives, I must frame it as a set of techniques, methodologies and behavior geared towards motivating people to share, participate and even recommend products and services to their circle of friends, colleagues and family - their affinity groups. Why "must" I? At the end of the day, we have to measure. Social media is not a measurable unit. WOM is. To make WOM a reliable approach to marketing, it must be measured in a way that CMOs, Communications Officers and CEOs, can report its effectiveness to reaching their business goal. WOM can be measured and reported today. We do it. BzzAgent does it. Visible Technologies does it. In the near future, an industry standard for that measurement will arise. Social media drives WOM.   

I am fresh back from the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit 2007 in Vegas. I serve on the board of the organization so take any endorsements for the organization with that in mind. The quality of the experience was up there: good speakers, topics, brands, solid debate, some news. It reminded me of why I joined the organization. Still it wasn't perfect. But that's okay. I enjoy the naive enthusiasm we all have for creating a new discipline based upon the tenants of two-way conversation with people, authentic relationships and the value of advocates (or "promoters" in the Net Promoter Score framework).

Problem is - are we a discipline? An expertise? Or just another channel? Having spent last week with about 500 people from brands, agencies and start-ups who think word of mouth is important enough to travel to Vegas during the final budget-clampdown quarter of the year, here's some points to consider:

Discipline or channel?
Discipline: Word of mouth marketing takes belief (based on understanding and knowledge) and discipline. There are no shortcuts. As Sean Driscoll from Microsoft points out , there is a 'right model' and a 'wrong model' of influencer marketing (which I interpret as a part of word of mouth marketing). The wrong model suggests that I can just tell people about the wonder of my brand and they will yak about it. The right model assumes a truly engaged conversation model where we listen as much as we talk. To do things "right" in Sean's vernacular, it is very hard to just tack on some WOM-stuff to a large traditional marketing campaign and expect significant results. Like any discipline, word of mouth marketing requires certain procedures and conditions to succeed.

Channel: The media buying companies and some advertising agencies want to see WOM as a channel. They deal in channels. They want to fill up on the 360 degrees of our lives reaching us at home, at play, at work. They want a new channel to deliver messages. Preferably one that is as predictable as other channels ("if I spend $1 more on WOM it will deliver X"). That's why BzzAgent's current configuration has been so successful with media agencies. they can just buy 6000 agents in three markets for 12 weeks. Feels like media. While the agents will talk about the product, this is not two-way conversation. And the brand is renting those agents not building a long-term relationship. Still, it is a form of word of mouth.

Discipline: To deliver on the promise of social media, word of mouth marketing, influencer marketing, conversation marketing - whatever part of WOM you want to emphasize - we need a simple, shared approach to measurement that compares well to what brand managers are used to. Yes, that probably means some sort of ad equivalency. That approach - comparing to advertising - may be a trap. Look what happened to public relations. In most cases PR reports media "hits" as equal to ad impressions. Shouldn't they be valued far north of simple paid impressions? And WOM, shouldn't that be like 10X and ad impression (with a true "recommendation" even north of that)? WOMMA and other groups are working on an industry standard for measuring WOM. I think we will have a solid model in 2008 that will be a tipping point for the discipline.

Channel: Many ad-based marketers see viral video as the answer to their WOM aspirations. If they can just get enough views of a video, it starts to feel like traditional media. And if the mechanism for accummulating those views is people sharing and recommending amongst their friends then that, my friend, is social media. Within the Ogilvy family, we have the ultimate accomplishment/curse: the Dove Evolution video. With millions of views under its belt, it really deserves to be the poster child for viral video. Because those views grew from people recommending it to others, it is more valuable than TV impressions (pull vs. push) BUT, it is one dimensional and doesn't fully utilize what is possible in word of mouth marketing. Still, many marketers will use this case as their compass for word of mouth and try to leverage the channel of video-sharing to meet their goals. Viral video leverages something that ad agencies are very good at: storytelling and filmmaking. That's why branded entertainment is ad agencies' social media technique of choice.

It's a discipline

Word of mouth is a broad discipline like advertising or public relations. It requires technique and methodologies that are particularly relevant to do it well. It is possible to treat it like a channel by tacking on some WOM tactic to a larger advertising program, but it may not pay off in comparison to those more traditional marketing tactics.

Most WOM strategy is about engagement and building strong relationships with a core group. If it serves a "reach" purpose, it is through the long-term multiplier effect of one satisfied and engaged customer telling 3 friends who tell 3 friends and so on. If you want to reach millions with a product launch in January and have no existing set of WOM relationships, word of mouth marketing is probably not your first choice. BUT if you had those relationships in place - oh, what a launch it would be.

Now the next interesting question is whether word of mouth will be a stand-alone discipline or be integrated into either PR or ad firms or both. Think of account planning (or connections planning). More often than not, this is a discipline found inside ad agencies. Yet several firms like Naked have cropped up where account planning is the defining discipline of the firm. Will the same thing happen with Word of Mouth? Forward thinking communications/marketing firms will build or acquire the expertise for a true word of mouth discipline (not just channel experience). they will do this in droves once the measurement nut is cracked. Until then, you will have the visionary companies who believe that business objectives for many (not all) clients can be achieved well and efficiently using WOM - setting up a WOM shop. That's where our team - 360 Digital Influence - comes in. I still believe that enlightened PR firms (i.e. more than 'media relations') shops) stand a better chance culturally of making these units work than traditional ad agencies.  Some specialty shops are already cropping up - Brains on Fire and Zocalo Group come to mind. Since WOM can be enhanced by advertising, PR, digital marketing, you name it, I prefer as much integration as possible.

Much has been written on the characteristics of the best word of mouth marketing. Suffice it to say that it is different than the discipline necessary for successful advertising campaigns.

John Bell runs the 360° Digital Influence team at Ogilvy and blogs at the Digital Influence Mapping Project

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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Blog Action Day: 7 Tips on Eating Differently To Impact Climate Change

One thing I can't resist is an ambitious project.  As a marketer, if there is a groundswell for something that I believe in or find interesting, I am highly likely to try and be a part of it.  That's why I join all sorts of groups, and why I try to lend my voice to causes that I believe are worthwhile.  The latest effort that I have been looking forward to being part of is also the reason why I'm posting twice in a single day ... something I don't usually do.  Today is Blog Action Day - something I have been promoting on the sidebar of my blog for several weeks now.

The aim of the project is to collect together all kinds of bloggers to talk about the environment.  The site featured a very smart way of letting bloggers sign up early and attaches a currency to being first in how all the blog participants are listed (in order of joining rather than by size of blog - so I'm in the 4001 to 5000 list).  The built in measurement of the site is also done through aggregating the readers via RSS, which they planned for by requesting the RSS link for every blog that wanted to participate when you signed up.  So far, it's a brilliant model for how to run a blog centric social marketing campaign - and the results are stellar so far.  The site boasts more than 15,000 blogs participating with an aggregated RSS reach of more than 12 million readers, and is publishing real time updates on buzz on the Blog Action Day blog.

Let's consider this reach for a moment.  One of the big measurement challenges in blogging is to equate an RSS reader with a regular old impression.  Impressions are typically measured on a monthly basis and multiplied out.  RSS readers are individual readers and therefore far more accurate.  I happen to believe an RSS reader is more involved than a regular impression as well - but how much more?  Even if you conservatively say it is worth 2x as much, this gives the reach of Blog Action day nearly 25 million readers.  On a single day.  That's pretty impressive.

But the point of this post is to talk about the reach but to talk about the environment.  My original thought was to come up with something new to say about it ... but while I was live blogging at the Corporate Climate Response event a few months ago, I published a post about tips for eating differently to impact climate change.  That's my contribution for Blog Action Day, republished below:

7 Tips on Eating Differently To Impact Climate Change

During a session run by Tara Garnett from the Food Climate Research Network at the Corporate Climate Response Conference, she shared a wide range of interesting research that was likely difficult for most participants to absorb quickly enough (and extremely difficult to keep up with for blogging purposes!). Luckily, FCRN has a fantastic research archive published online at their website and also provide links to an assortment of research from other groups collected into a single archive. One of the more interesting points Garnett raised was what steps regular consumers could take in order to change their own eating habits to make an impact on CO2 emissions. This is often a little talked about topic, and as Garnett noted, it is notoriously difficult to ask consumers to do - mostly because of the huge cultural significance of food and the difficulty of sacrifice. For many consumers, however, it may simply be a lack of information. For all of them, here are 7 tips Garnett shared about ways you can change your eating habits to have an impact:

1. Change the balance of what you eat (less meat and dairy, “lower down” on the food chain)
2. Choose seasonal field grown foods (require less storage, heating & transport)
3. Do not eat or purchase certain foods (including foods that are hothoused or those that are air freighted)
4. Reduce your dependence on the “cold chain” (get rid of the second freezer, choose less processed robust foods and do more frequent non car-based shopping)
5. Waste less food (improve your “food turnover” to eat what you buy sooner and reduce wastage)
6. Cook more efficiently (cook for more people and for several days at a time, use the oven less frequently)
7. Redefine your ideal for quality (be willing to accept variability in quality and supply

In addition to this post, here are a few other posts from this blog over the past year which may hopefully inspire your thinking and perhaps even inspire some action:

"Greenest Hits" From Influential Marketing Blog:

• The Greenest Sports Event on Earth
• The Marketing of "An Inconvenient Truth"
• Live Earth Includes DC, Thanks To The Native Americans
• One Hour No Power Campaign - And Other Ways to Save the World
• Wikimapia, Google's Green Summer and Marketing Mashups

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The Gun Is In The Wrong Hand

When you watch a film, do you notice which hand the character on screen is holding the gun in?  And if you do, would you notice if in a following scene, the gun happened to be in the wrong hand?  I guarantee you anyone who has ever worked on editing a film will notice this.  They can't help it.  When shooting the same scene over multiple days (which happens often), consistency is key.  It's usually even someone's job to check this.  The problem with noticing the gun is in the wrong hand though, is that it overshadows your experience of the film.  You have too much knowledge to enjoy it.  If you think about it, we deal with this tyranny of excess knowledge everyday.  Once you have flown business class, it's hard to accept flying economy.  After working as a waiter at a particular restaurant, it is nearly impossible to enjoy a meal there (once you know what happens behind the kitchen).

Would it be better to have no knowledge of a situation before walking into it?  One of the best movie experiences I remember having was going to see Confidence in Australia on its opening weekend.  It was the rare case where, somehow, I managed to make it to my seat in the theater with absolutely no knowledge of the film.  No one had recommended it to me.  I did not know who was starring in it.  I hadn't seen any reviews or trailers, or read any plot summaries.  I hadn't even seen a movie poster.  Walking into the theater and sitting down to watch that movie was a completely blank slate.  And I enjoyed the film in a way I can hardly remember enjoying any other, because I did not know what to expect.

Of course, when it comes to choosing a film to spend your hard earned $7 to $12 bucks on on a Friday night, Hollywood knows that most people don't want to go in blind.  They want to know what to expect, who the stars are and that they won't be disappointed.  This is why the franchise movies (Spiderman, Ocean's Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen, Elizabeth II, etc.) are so popular.  Because the movie studios are betting on proven idea.  This also explains why independent and small budget films have such trouble getting box office time and large audiences.  Small or new businesses have a similar challenge.  A consumer knows what to expect when they walk into Target or purchase a box of Oreo's.  Going against that knowlege is a tough thing.  But when you do, you can create an unexpected and memorable moment.  Giving consumers what they expect is overrated.  Sometimes the most powerful way to reach someone is by giving them an experience they know nothing about.

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!

Casting Call: Your Chance to Speak at Ad:Tech NY

One of the questions I have gotten from more than a few readers is how to get into speaking at events and conferences.  It is surprisingly more easy than it may seem, but the real challenge is breaking into your first conference speaking chance.  Perhaps you work for a small company, or you are still starting out your career.  Whatever the reason, you might feel like speaking at events is open to a closed realm of people.  It's not.  In an effort to open up what can sometimes seems like an insular world of marketing speakers, I got clearance from the organizers of Ad:Tech NY to do something different in recruiting speakers for my upcoming panel at Ad:Tech.  Consider this post an open casting call for a speaking slot on the panel.  Here is a description of the panel:

wednesday, november 7, 11:00am - 12:00pm
Creating Talkability: Using WOM Lessons to Make Your Marketing Go Viral
No one creates a "viral" video. As much as any marketing team wants to go into a campaign with the goal of having it take off and get discussed all over the Internet, the real aim is to create something talkable. Once enough people talk about it, you go viral...but that is an outcome, not the intial goal. In this session, we've gathered individuals who know all about going viral—both on purpose and by accident. Each will share tips on what it takes to go viral, and whether doing so should be your aim. If you want to know how to avoid getting ignored, create something worth talking about and understand whether a science exists for taking something viral, this panel has the answers.

I could fill this panel with folks that I know (as most panel speakers are selected) - but I thought it would be more interesting to see if we can use the panel to discover a new speaker.  Someone who hasn't spoken at an event before but is looking for their first chance. 

So, here's your shot.  Here's how you can participate:

1. Write a paragraph or two explaining what perspective you would bring to the panel that the audience would be interested in.
2. Post your submission through a comment on this post, or on your own blog and provide a link through a comment.

That's it.  The only requirement is that you be a new speaker who has not spoken at industry events before.  Next Tuesday, I'll post the three strongest and open up voting through the rest of the week for the winner.  The aim is to get a variety of voices on the panel (ie - agency, client, vendor, etc.), and there are several folks I and the conference organizers have already been speaking to for filling the other slots. 

UPDATE: Last month I selected a winner of this casting call and notified all the entrants who submitted prior to the deadline I noted above.  The winner was Terence Thomas from BIA Information Network.  Congratulations to Terence and thanks to everyone for their interest!

Note - For those unfamiliar with Ad:Tech, it is a huge show generally considered one of the largest in the interactive marketing industry.  This year in New York, the event has lined up some top notch speakers - including Beth Comstock, Teresa Iezzi, Ted McConnell, Suzie Reider, Jon Fine and many others.

Add Your Votes To The New SxSW Panel Picker

For those who follow this blog, you know that I attend and speak at a lot of events.  Each has a different vibe and type of attendee - and I've been to some amazing events and heard many fantastic speakers.  This past year, one that stood out was the annual South by Southwest Festival that takes over the town of Austin, Texas for more than a week.  During that time, there is a film festival, a music festival and the interactive event - and the atmosphere around the event is unlike any other for interactive marketers.  Because of the combination of music, film and interactive - it is a haven for creativity and this past year it was a big venue for new sites and services to try and launch their betas and get them in front of influential individuals.  Many trace back the fast rise in popularity of Twitter back to SxSW this year.

Next year's event in March 2008 promises to be no different and is going to be very important timing for me because it is likely to coincide closely with the release of my new marketing book which I've been fairly silent about apart from announcing the deal back in June of this year. Look out early next week for much more detail about the book - but in the meantime I have several panel ideas up on the interactive panel picker for SxSW and there are more than 600 entries from great minds and influencers from across the interactive industry.  Visit the Panel Picker at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ and check out some of the great panels in the lineup. 

Here is a direct link to go directly to my three panel submissions: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/2/q:ogilvy

Also, here are the descriptions that I provided for each idea that you can read on the panel picker:

1. 10 Easy Ways To Piss Off a Blogger (and Other Mistakes Marketers Make) - The short history of blogging is filled with the examples of clueless marketers who have suffered being flamed, outed or ignored by the "cruel" blogosphere. Yet approaching bloggers is not as risky as it might seem -- it just requires a new approach. In this session, you will see real examples of 10 of the most common mistakes marketers make when approaching bloggers and how to avoid them. Vote for this panel now - http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/20
2. Creating the Ultimate Personal Brand With Social Media - Starting a blog is easy, but getting it to stand out among millions of blogs is going to be tougher and tougher. In this session, you will get real tips for how you can make your blog, social networks and online profiles all work together to help you build the ultimate personal brand -- to help you make money, get your dream job, sell that big book deal or rank first on Google for your name. Vote for this panel now - http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/19
3. The Authentic Business: Making Your Personality the Secret Weapon - Despite what you might have heard, transparency doesn't matter. In an age of authenticity, the rise of social media means that customers are looking for the true identity behind a company or a product and just letting them in is not enough. This session will show you how to make your business stand out by using your real personality.  Vote for this panel now - http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/21

If any of these seems interesting to you, I hope you register on the site and add your vote.  In addition to my own submissions, there are lots of other great panels worth voting for.  I have not yet had time to go through all of the more than 600 panel ideas, but I already cast my vote for several that stood out for me.  Here are a few of the ones I recommend checking out (I'll put in links when I get a chance to do the cutting and pasting - but for now you can use the search feature to find any of these):

• Michelle Osorio, DivX - How Filmmakers Got Their Voice Back
• Anastasia Goodstein, Ypulse.com - Totally Wired Teens: How Teens are Using Your Applications
• Zadi Diaz, Smashface - Immersive Entertainment: The Next Step in New Media Production
• G. Kofi Annan, Annansi LL - Africa 2.0: Affecting Change Using Technology
• Tim Ferriss, Author - The Art of Speed         
• Daniel Hope, MotivateMedia - Blog on Company Time Without Getting Dooced
• Henry Copeland, Blogads - The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007
• Rachel Clarke, Behind the Buzz - Stories, Games and Your Brand         
• Mike Monello, Campfire - Persistent Engagement: Why Your _____ Isn't Enough
• Ned Desmond, Time Inc. - Cover Story: Building Brands for a Digital World

Happy voting and hope to see you at SxSW next year!

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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.

Live Earth Includes DC, Thanks To The Native Americans

Today might be the largest simultaneous social marketing event ever staged - as Live Earth concerts light up stadium stages on 7.5 stages on 7 continents.  In case you're wondering, the "0.5" stage is right here in DC.  The concert taking place now is at the American Indian Museum after they offered their venue for a "Mother Earth" version of the concert.  Why this venue instead of the preferred larger one on the steps of the Capitol in DC?  Mainly because partisan politics from Republicans who believe global warming is a "hoax" (led by James Inhofe) threatened to keep the DC event from happening and blocked it from taking place in Gore's originally preferred venue.  Regardless, the event is here in DC and I will be heading out to see it live and share photos later tonight.

In the meantime, there are live video streams and information available at http://liveearth.msn.com/ as well as a full schedule of artists and shows.  Despite this live satellite feed - I can't help but wish for more integration of social media so I could share in people's experiences of the shows real time throughout the day.  There is a Live Earth blog, but it is authored by a single individual who is going to the concert in NY and watching the rest online and on TV like the rest of us.  Even the Unofficial Live Earth blog is mostly updated by a single person.  Michael Prospero from the Fast Company Blog is promising to live blog the New York event, and I am sure there are other similar individuals at the other concerts doing the same - but there doesn't seem to be a way to collect this aggregated conversation in a single location, which seems like a big missed opportunity. For a global concert event across 8 cities - one person is never going to be able to share the entire experience of the event in a comprehensive way because they cannot be in more than one (or 2) places at once.  If there was ever a moment where I might actually care to read Twitter updates from lots of people I don't know, this would be it. 

Regardless, watching these events unfold live around the world is addictive and I've been spending much of a day where I intended to work on my book watching the films and concert performances in HD on TV.  The campaign has a very simple call to action and plenty of easy ways for each and every person to make a pledge to "answer the call."  Every social marketing campaign should be so relevant and have such a clear way for anyone participate.  If you haven't seen any of the shows, be sure to visit the Live Earth site today - and stay tuned for a report from the DC event and hopefully some live photos from me later this evening.

Update Rant - Can someone explain to me why the sound and video crew covering the DC event are the only ones that don't seem to understand how to get a good camera shot (without sun flares or blue overtones) or how to get microphones to work where you can actually hear the singers performing?  There's a big step down in quality of the TV broadcast between the DC event and all the other events I have seen so far ...

500 Things You Can Learn From A Supermodel

Chances are, the idea of learning anything from a supermodel is probably not an easy idea to accept.  Yet despite your initial skepticism, consider for a moment the fact that the job of a model is to look good.  We all know that part of this look can be due to creative photoshop artistry and "post-production" - as Dove's Evolution video brilliantly pointed out.  What few of us are willing to admit is that we all engage in our own forms of "photoshoppery" on a daily basis--whether it is selecting a certain kind of makeup, or taking that week long vacation to get tan for the summer, or starting a summer workout regimen to get those washboard abs.  These are things we all do ... and more importantly, these are things that models are uniquely qualified to tell us about.  They have the personal trainers, they work with the hair stylists and they see the tricks of the makeup artists.  In many ways, a model is the person most qualified to teach you about beauty.

This is the brilliant concept behind Ford Models TV, a site run by Ford Models - one of the premier modeling agencies in the world.  Through their site, they have created nearly 500 unique videos that are each nearing 100,000 views just over the past year.  Do the math and they may very well have quietly been amassing the largest number of views for branded short videos of any company online.  Someone will be sure to correct me on that, but there is no arguing that their videos are very popular and are driving a large amount of brand interaction.  You might expect the main reason to be that they all feature hot people - and that is certainly part of it.  But no one gets naked and instead the videos cover topics ranging from how to use blush and bronzer (whatever that is) to how to do pushups properly (video embedded below).  Johnny Lavoy - one of Ford's hairstylists has a series of popular videos showing how to achieve certain looks with your hair.  Particularly interesting is the smart strategy the site has of also distributing their videos through just about every large video sharing site online. 

The result is an archive of content that has multiple distribution points, engages viewers, and positions Ford Agency very well for new talent looking to get started in modeling (which seems to be the goal of the effort).  Following through to their recruiting page, they encourage aspiring models to take real photos and position the agency as representing the "most beautiful people in the world."  Their models may not have a crush on Obama - but the way Ford Models is using online video to promote their brand goes beyond viral.  Trying to create the next viral hit is not the only strategy for using online video for marketing.  Just take a look at Ford Model TV to see how one marketer is doing it right.  Now we all just have to hope this success can be duplicated even if we don't happen to have an arsenal of the most beautiful people in the world to use as our spokespeople.