This is one of the most touching, honest and real stories we have seen in a long time.

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

We don’t share this only for entertainment value. There is a lesson here for marketers as well.

In this age of financial challenge and competition for consumers, marketers and companies alike MUST be honest, strait-forward and REAL with customers. They won’t settle for anything else.

It’s not about being perfect.
It’s not about being slick.
It’s not about being all things to all people.

This is not to say that we can’t continue to come up with smart and conceptual ways to communicate with customers. We just all need to make sure that we’re doing it in a truthful, honest and supportable way.

Tell your story.
Tell it with truth and honest representation of your product/service.
Treat your customers as part of your family.
Respect the strength of reason.
Respect the power of emotion.

There has been much debate on the future of “print”. As technology progresses and information is made available quicker and quicker, print will indeed have to change or die. But also, we need to look at how we define “print”.

To us, print can be defined as any presentation of words or content that the user can take the time to personally engage with. So, therefore, print can be almost anywhere. It’s how it’s executed and presented that make the difference as to whether it will be successful in communicating a message. Or being compelling enough that people will take the time to read, or experience it’s content. Much like any endeavor, it’s the consumer experience that make a difference.

There is some amazing technology being developed that will indeed change how we view, and interact with, print. The goal is still the same, to create a user experience that is both rewarding and fulfilling for the consumer and financially feasible for the producer. Magazine and newspaper publishers have been dealing with this for years. Hell, anyone who produces any type of content that they want consumers to notice have been dealing with this for years. The methods of delivery are changing and we’d better be ready to change with it.

The goals are still the same.

1. Take content, information or some type of message and make it compelling enough that people want to interact with it, or “consume” it if you will.
2. Provide such a unique message or experience that when they “consume” it that it provides a value to them to the extent that they are willing to either take some type of action based on this message, or be willing to pay some amount to be able to continue to have that experience.
3. Be able to “own” this particular space, content or experience for the furtherance of your “brand”.

If these goals sound like the goals of almost any good communications or advertising plan, you are correct. It will be the way that we use these new tools that will make or break the success of these efforts.

The next two often overlooked parts of this equation are design and interface. You may have all the right elements and content, but if they are not presented in the right way to create the best user or consumer experience, there’s a good chance that it may fail.

This is not to say that that things need to be “hyper-designy” or overly pretty. A great example of this concept is the SONY Walkman and Apple’s iPod. The iPod was able to take over the world because it made all of its bells, whistles and music available to the average consumer in a seemingly simple way. It wasn’t over designed with graphics or features, nor was it lacking. The SONY Walkman is actually a brilliant piece of technology. It was designed to do all of the things that the iPod was plus even more things that consumers said they “wanted”. So why is the Walkman not even really mentioned in the music device “wars” anymore?

The Walkman was designed by brilliant engineers and functions as a brilliant engineer thinks and interacts. Your average consumer is not a brilliant engineer (myself included) and just wants to simply access our music, or other digital files or games and be able to use them in a very simple way. iPod was able to create a delivery of a product(s) in a very simple, approachable way. Its design is beautiful in it’s simplicity and the user experience and interface is beautifully simple.

In essence, a lot of what people now use their iPods and iPhones (and any other “smart” device) to access can, by the definition above, be defined as “print”. Read it again and see if you agree. Don’t try to define it in literal, tangible terms, but what it’s trying to accomplish.

So let’s re-examine “print”, how we use it, and how it becomes a valuable asset in the future. We still need great writers, designers, photographers, illustrators and content. Now, with the technology we have coming available we will be able to even further tailor the user experience with the interface design and creating a unique experience with our content. It can be beautiful, inspiring, relevant and valuable just as people in yesteryears defined “traditional print”.

This is a great example of how the “print” experience is evolving and some of the opportunities and possibilities that will be emerging any day now, and it’s beautiful.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Mag+ (video prototype footage only) from Bonnier on Vimeo.

This post was written by Tim Scott, founder and creative director of THEM!. THEM! is a creative company founded to find new ways to help companies create marketing efforts that get results and create opportunities, through any technology or media possible. Contact THEM! at www.THEMdidit.com or call 541 306 6723 for more information.

Tap into Your Super-Consumers
8:39 AM Wednesday November 25, 2009 
by Eddie Yoon

In any product category, roughly 10% of the consumers account for more than 50% of the profits. These super-consumers, as we call them, are the hot dog buyers who eat five pounds of hot dogs a month, wolfing down as many as 4 per sitting. They are the stapler users who own 8 different staplers. They know what they want, they’ll buy a lot of it, and they’ll pay a premium for it. They’re passionate and engaged — sometimes even a little obsessive — and they exist in every category, from soft drinks and air travel to fast-food and oral care products. Many managers assume that their super-consumers are a unique species whose extreme appetites say little about what more casual consumers might go for. They also figure that their super-consumers are already sated, so there’s no point in probing them further. That’s a mistake.

We’ve found that companies that listen to their super-consumers and use their insights to refine their message ultimately grow sales and margins across all segments. These companies aren’t trying to convert light users into heavy users. Rather, they’re figuring out what it is the super-consumers like so much and then offering it to them. Invariably, acting on the insights from those consumers who spend disproportionate time and energy in the category uncovers insights and innovations that encourage trade-up behaviors across other segments as well.

Consider this: A stapler company we consulted for found itself heading for a price war with competitors. What to do? Market research with its community of stapler groupies — users who stapled ten times as much as the average person — found that they valued anti-jamming above all other features, and would happily pay a premium for high-performance, jam-free staplers. Running with this insight, the company redesigned its point of sale to emphasize electric staplers and refocused its marketing message across all products on benefits (like reliability) rather than features (like color). The strategy boosted sales by 20% and improved margins overall. Not only did electric stapler sales increase (fueled by super-consumers), but the merchandizing strategy emphasizing the benefits of trading up increased sales of heavy-duty manual staplers across other segments.

Or consider how a refrigerated-meat manufacturer used super-consumer feedback to develop a fuller understanding of its true core customers — teenage boys and their moms. Their heaviest users, they found, were not summertime backyard grillers, as they’d thought, but households with teenage boys who eat hot dogs for after school snacks. The boys liked the taste of the all-beef products, and how filling and easy to cook they were. The moms liked their quality (certainly compared to the junk teenage boys normally eat). Armed with this insight, the manufacturer focused its portfolio strategy on all-beef products, emphasized taste at point of sale, and shifted its marketing to extreme sports and gaming environments to build awareness among teen boys — who’d push their moms to buy the brand.

While these decisions were grounded in the insights of the super-consumers, the strategy ultimately paid off across all segments. The brand grew over 40% in three years, increased its share of household penetration and successfully usurped the number one position in the category. While super-consumers accounted for more than 40% of that growth, those weekend backyard grillers drove a nearly equal percentage, with the remaining 20% realized through category expansion. Delivering the optimal product to super-consumers was certainly the primary goal, but in the process the brand succeeded in commanding a price premium and encouraging trade-up behavior across other segments as well.

Has your company tapped the wisdom of its super-consumers? Are you willing to listen to them — and respond? 



Eddie Yoon is a Principal with The Cambridge Group. During his more than ten year tenure with the firm he has helped global clients across industries leverage super-consumer insights to fuel profitable growth.

This post is originally from HarvardBusiness.org and can be found here.

This is a great article from 2005 that holds true today. Let’s refocus our efforts and thinking to a way that truly benefits everyone.

THE MARKETING COMPANY COMMUNICATIONS DISCONNECT
And Why Ad Agencies Are Viewed as Laborers Rather Than Architects
June 06, 2005
By A. Louis Rubin

Marketing communications companies are not being given a seat at their client’s strategic table. It’s the sad truth that no one in the communications business wants to acknowledge or admit.

It’s not that brilliant communications ideas don’t have a profound strategic impact on a business, because they do, but that clients view their communications companies as purveyors of execution with a bias toward the “what” of “what’s for sale” in the back room of their various “factories.”

The problem is widespread. A recent informal survey of corporate communications officers found them all in agreement that their CEOs did not value their marketing communications firms as a complete strategic partner to their business.

Boards of large public companies
More telling is how few communications professionals sit on corporate boards of large public companies. An examination of the Fortune 20 finds only GE with two working practitioners on their board (Ann Fudge of Young & Rubicam and Shelley Lazarus of Ogilvy & Mather). J.P. Donlon, editor in chief of Directorship, a monthly publication on corporate governance, notes that the “reason why there are few communications professionals on boards per se is that only a handful understand that communications is an amplification of business strategy — not something separate or apart from it. Certainly CEOs need to understand this as well.”

The bottom line is that few communications professionals are invited into the inner sanctorum of marketers’ strategy and planning sessions on the executive committee level.
How did this happen?

Somewhere along the way, ad agencies and other communications companies started thinking less about the strategy and more about selling execution. Worse yet, they started to fill their staffs with people who were craftsmen and not strategists. The result: They began to be viewed as laborers, not architects.

It wasn’t always so
It wasn’t always so. At Scali, McCabe Sloves, Ed McCabe invented some memorable advertisements that were also great strategic synopses (for Volvo: “Safety”; for Nikon: “We Take the World’s Greatest Pictures”; for Purdue: “It Takes a Tough Man to Make a Tender Chicken”). Looking back on those executions today you can see they are pretty simple demonstrations of the strategy. No talking animals, no hordes of barbarians storming the shopping mall, no bikini teams. The executions were not a pantheon of special effects. They had a strategic underpinning that reflected the clients’ overall business goals. They were strategic organizing principles upon which to base all brand communications.

The work that Young & Rubicam did for RadioShack in the early ’90s is another good example of how good strategy affects a business and cements the relationship between client and agency. RadioShack’s “You’ve Got Questions. We’ve Got Answers” campaign was created to recognize that service at the retail level is what was for sale. It gave customers a reason to seek out RadioShack — not just a piece or a part. It told employees what their jobs were about. It was a big strategic idea and Len Roberts, then CEO of RadioShack, invited his agency team in on every key business decision because they offered strategic insight into the client’s most urgent business needs.

What these examples have at their core are big strategic ideas, because the only thing that binds people in an asexual entity called a corporation is an idea that people understand and live by. Says Donlon, “No executive or employee is going to throw himself or herself on a grenade for shareholder value. But an employee at Merck or Pfizer might stick his or her neck out to get a cure for cancer. The job of the communication strategist is to ensure the idea is big enough and powerful enough to convince people that the [business] goal is worth the effort and treasure. It’s also the CEO’s job to reinforce this every day.”

Puerile jokes and titillation
But these examples tend to be the exception, not the rule. Nowadays, execution trumps strategy, special effects reign and puerile jokes and titillation are the platforms from which products are sold. And very few communications efforts represent the strategic underpinning for how a brand can utilize all the tools of an integrated marketing communications program — from Web and public relations to advertising and trade shows, collateral sales material and internal communications.

It’s great strategy, not execution, that can inform every constituent, from customer and salesman, from factory worker and portfolio manager to Wall Street analyst on how to view the brand and the company. The right strategic platform helps employees understand why they work for the company and provides a badge of pride that gets translated directly to the bottom line through productivity and purpose. It tells the investment community why this is a good company to invest in. And finally, it gives customers a deep, fundamental, thoughtful, considered and enduring reason to do business.

How to Develop Good Strategy

1      First acknowledge that strategy is what you are selling. Not an ad. Not a logo. Not a list of public relations tactics. These are only executions and that makes them commodities to be evaluated subjectively, or worse yet, based on price of execution.

2      Tell the truth. Suppress your excitement at having a revenue-potential client at the table and focus on the truth about product reality, competitive strengths and weaknesses and organizational problems and issues. CEOs have trouble determining truth from myth because everyone around them has an agenda to sell. To stand out, tell the truth.

3      Throw out your factory — the daily special on the menu — to offer what the customer wants, not what you have in inventory. You must solve the client’s business problem, not go in with your CFO’s cost structure of how you have to utilize the specialized resources on your payroll.

4      Focus on the client’s customer. Avoid the product attribute discussion that your client wants you to execute. Building a great strategy begins with an understanding of customer needs. And too often execution panders to internal audiences versus a strategic insight about the end-user.

5      Hire people who think strategically. Now this may sound just plain dumb, but how many of you have recruiting policies in place where you go and visit Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Swarthmore, etc. in the spring to find the smartest, most imaginative minds in the world? How can you expect your organization to grow with the best talent if you don’t have a program in place to find them?

If you want your client marketers to respect your thinking, start thinking from a strategic vantage point in an unbiased way. Start telling the truth. Divorce yourself from execution. Find the best fresh minds in the world to help. And maybe then you’ll get invited into that walnut burled conference room.

Another good article on marketing strategy vs. tactics here.

With all of the “information” about Social Media running rampant out there we’ve decided to start an ongoing list of Social Media references and links that we’ve found useful. Feel free to send yours over!

General Social Media:

1. 10 Tools of the Social Media Swiss Army Knife
2. How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day
3. Build a social media plan that never sleeps
4. Top 8 Ways To Use Social Media

Twitter Resources:

1. A great introduction to Twitter
2. HUGE Twitter resource list!
3. How to Speak Twitter – a twitter glossary
4. How to Use Twitter as a Twool Marketing in 140 Characters or Less
5. What Can Twitter Do for You? More than you might imagine
6. 27 Twitter Applications Your Small Business Can Use Today
7. 4 ways companies use Twitter for business
8. Find and Follow Top Business Execs on Twitter
9. Twitter: Building Businesses Tweet by Tweet
10. How to follow back everyone on Twitter without ruining your experience.

Blog Resources:

1. Why Is Your Business Afraid of Negative Blog Posts?
2. 10 ways to boost the value of your corporate blog
3. The Top 50 Blogs for Startups In 2009

Facebook Resources:

1. 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence

Tools we like and use:

1. Tweetdeck
2. Yahoo! Sideline

We will continue updating and adding so check back often. If you find any dead or inactive links please let us know.

Fear seems to be the big ruler of large organizations right now. And understandably so. But fear is paralyzing and inhibitive. Exactly what we DON’T need right now. It’s a time of change and transition, but it’s also a time of growth and creativity.

Impersonal and disconnected just doesn’t work in this environment. People want to trust, want personal contact and definitely want a reason to believe. “Because I said so” isn’t acceptable any more.

Consider the strong trend of “social media”. People are looking for personal contact and a feeling of being personally connected. Granted, a lot of the “connections” are strictly virtual, but it’s still a direct connection with the outside world and information. Companies are slowly beginning to understand and several are doing new and innovative things with communications outlets like Twitter. Check out people like @zappos, @SouthwestAir, @JetBlue, @GMblogs and others. They are working to connect directly with their consumers. Some better than others.

One of my personal biggest frustrations when I was working as a creative director at the “big agencies” in New York City was the lack of connection and understanding of the business needs that were driving our assignments. We have so many tactics and medias available today I cringe at the number of dollars wasted simply because major decisions were made almost blindly simply based on gross tactical generalizations.

Now as a smaller agency, our goal is to truly get to know and understand our clients. Not just on the corporate laugh level, but to truly understand their challenges and their consumers and marketplace. That is the best way that we can effectively create a plan and execution that will work as effectively as possible with todays smaller budgets.

We strongly encourage our clients to give us a business challenge or a desired outcome rather than a request for a print ad or a “viral campaign”. This allows us to dig into the myriad of opportunities and medias to create a message that is as targeted and effective as possible. And last but not least, we strongly encourage our clients to be part of the process. The more we know and understand about you, your organization and your product or service, the better we can communicate that to your customers.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, your consumers want to feel like you are vested in them and that you care about them and their business. We have been told time and time again that “it’s not personal, it’s business”. But business now is personal. What we do in business affects people in personal ways. And we should never lose sight of that.

This post was inspired by a post at harvardbusiness.org entitled “Why Small Companies Will Win In This Economy”.

“Social media” can be defined a lot of different ways. Does it have to be on-line? Nope. It’s simply a way of socializing with people. The “media” in this case is a simple 8.5″x11″ piece of paper. But it’s effective. So that’s the lesson in this short to us business folk. It doesn’t have to be fancy or elaborate to work. It simply has to have the right message at the right time and place.

This is a great little short film Directed by @RadicalMedia’s Patrick Hughes for the Schweppes Short Film Festival. It may bring a smile to your face. And that’s a good thing…

Here’s an article from AdWeek and my good friend Mr. Martin Bihl. One of the smartest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

First off, we’d like to say that truly great creativity and thinking is what pushes our buttons. It’s not something that we really chose. It’s just kinda part of who we are.