Tribe

Seth Godin, speaking at IAB Mixx, made some interesting comments about "cutting through the noise" to reach consumers.

Give up. (I'm paraphrasing here.)

It's hard to contradict the venerable Mr. Godin, and I'm not going to try. It's very interesting, though, to suggest that we've all been "branded to death." Going further, if consumers are going to choose a product not merely based on the message, but in order to belong to a tribe--how are they going to identify with that tribe? Social media? I'd like to think that the best product will win--at least the first consumers will be analytical about the product, before the followers come.

On a related-but-not note, I was speaking with a colleague who is 21 years old and was among the first Facebook users, and she was predicting the demise of Facebook: "I find I don't use it as much anymore. We're all getting too open. It's too much information."

If we don't have Facebook, how will we find our tribe? Fundamentally, the drive to belong is primal, and s/he who figures that out holds the key to the future, whether it's Facebook or something else.

Best B2B Voices: Part 3

A few days ago I mentioned I’d found 2 great B2B voices. Last week I talked about IBM (which still surprises me how well written their site is—though I should clarify that’s not because it’s sooo head-and-shoulders above the rest, but rather I still hold onto an apparently inaccurate IBM stereotype).

The other voice is TribalDDB.

In the agencies where I’ve worked (which is to say, not big ones), their agency website was always an afterthought since between billable hours and non-billable hours, billable is going to win every time. Apparently that’s not true for biggies. (Huh. Putting as much effort in your own site as you would a client’s. Smart. Maybe that’s why they got big.)

At any rate, what’s working in their voice? TribalDDB makes what they do sound exciting. They don’t overwhelm with too much information. And they speak in metaphor that distills the potentially dry service offering into something easily understood as beneficial. For example, describing SEO/SEM the headline is “Hey needle, time to burn the haystack.” SEO/SEM is spectacularly boring except to people who really understand its power. And guess what? That headline describes its power.

Why aren’t more B2B voices like that? Is the problem that TribalDDB doesn’t want to spend as much time getting to know it’s clients’ benefits the way it does its own? I sincerely doubt that. More likely clients won’t hand the reins over. They’re scared to be too different. And maybe it’s right to be afraid of being different. But standing out is also how you beat the competition.

Best B2B Voices: Part 2

So quite a while back I posted that I’m looking for great B2B
voices. They are hard to come by, in my experience. Over the course of the past few months I’ve looked and have 2 good examples, though I don’t think by any means this is the conclusive list.

Let’s start with the one I found first: IBM. I know, crazy, right? They have nicely humorous TV ads (which, as I mentioned, is where B2B often has fun), but who knew they could nail their voice on their website, too? If you’re interested in this stuff, which you must be if you’re reading this, seriously go to ibm.com.

They do a wonderful job of delivering the facts—which are of course heavy in technology systems and other topics that could easily become tangled, boring and jargony. They manage to avoid that very well. In fact, they are great at keeping it simple, warm and friendly—maybe not compared to a consumer product/website, but certainly compared with the competition.

The most important part is that they place a terrific focus on you.

The design (which is not my focus, but of course is relevant), is simple, clean and lets the content come through. Tabs at the bottom of the home page make for quick scanning of the volumes of info available on the site. Information on deeper level pages is also well divided into digestible chucks for the average scanning user.

Lastly, while their TV ads and website have a very different voice and look, it’s not too radically different. It feels consistent. IBM has a great UX and content team. IBM, give them a raise.

2 Great Ads

I get shivers when I see great ad copy. Just saw two today:

1. Billboard for Group Health Cooperative. For those who don’t know, Group Health is a big coop in this area. It’s a health care option that’s commonly offered especially at tech companies (last I heard, it’s still on the menu at Microsoft). The billboard had simple copy: Live Long and Prosper. Talk about nailing your audience AND benefits AND humor!
2. Small delivery truck for Staples. We all know the office supply company, so this doesn’t need explaining. The copy is “I break for empty staplers.” Brilliant. I love the double entendre of staplers as in the handy little device, and staplers being people who use Staples delivery services.

Always inspiring to see great work.

Blog writing vs. engineering: don't be a frog

Mark Schaefer wrote a good post this morning that discusses a key point in blogging today: about how so many bloggers (or, as I may call them, "blogbots") engineer their blog posts based on keywords.

In my humble writerly opinion, content engineering is a slippery slope that may turn the relationship building aspects of social media into... meaninglessness. It used to be that only those who really had something to say went off and blogged. People who followed them were interested in hearing it. Now many are doing it not because they have something to say, but instead are focused on the delightful end result of
page views --> brand building --> sales.

Ideally, these keywords bubble up organically through what you would normally want to talk about on your blog. If you're forcing it, then you're going to sound funny. Robotic. And unless you're JPL, that's probably not the voice you're looking for.

While such a focus may yield short term benefits, you may well end up sacrificing the relationship part. And it makes the consumer kiss more frogs before finding their prince.

The moral of the story is, don't be a frog.

Spicing up a social media campaign

The marketing world is all atwitter (pun intended, of course) with the Old Spice social media success. @edlee pointed out quite correctly on 15 July that the phenomenal message generation was all started with millions of dollars in traditional media—the TV ads and the witty agency that came up with it.

Social media and traditional media don’t have to be bitter enemies: they actually are great friends. We marketers are still in the process of testing how to best use them (educated guesses, but still guesses to some degree). Old Spice just made the commitment. I mean, personal video responses to tweets? That’s commitment that most marketers would run from in horror.

That is, until they figured out to make it a bigger deal than it really is.

“Boldness has genius, power and magic in it,” said Goethe (I’m citing not to show off my superior intellect, but rather so I don't have to go to all the trouble of linking to the quote).*

On the other hand, @edlee also just tweeted that Old Spice sales are down 7% in the US (not including Wal-Mart). Is that A) a game of knock-the-leader-off-the pedestal or B) numbers from before this campaign or C) proof that humor can distract too much from the real product benefits message? Time will tell.

* After posting I nerdily read up on this quote... apparently it is not really by Goethe. It's really by W.H. Murray who claimed it came from Goethe—presumably using an extremely loose translation of G's work.

Write it bad. Real bad.

Sometimes, you just gotta get out of your shell. As a creative, we're expected to be fresh and different and unique and resonant... all the time. It's exhausting.

There are many ways I've stumbled across to overcome this. Things like going to a different location (other than your desk), handwriting (or hand-drawing) rather than using the computer. Little things like these can make a surprising impact on what you create. They'll help you get out of the proverbial box.

The one I haven't seen written down anywhere is doing Bad Writing. You know the stuff. Cringe worthy horrors of adjective-laden, passive-voiced drivel. My technique is to sit down and purposefully write stuff that would never, ever make it to my portfolio. Throw in some needlessly poor grammar, too (see the headline of this post).

While you're at it, set your inner critic free and rip it to pieces for not being bad enough.

If you're a designer, throw color theory out the window, mix 72 different fonts, go wild with visuals that make you want to poke your eyes out.

I have a theory that this stuff sometimes gets bottled up in your system, blocking access to the golden harp-strumming prose and design that you need to make a living.

So open the tap. Let it flow. Write the worst possible stuff you can come up with. Often times after doing that, I walk away and come back. And find that towards the end of my flood of atrocities, there's the nugget of something good.