LaughlinOutLoud

If I had to guess, most CEOs are more bewildered than ever by how to evaluate or develop strategies around influencing the bloggers who influence brands.  Sure we all know that angry bloggers are bad for brands and happy bloggers are good.  But that doesn’t write a manual for how to influence them.

Then there’s the question, just how many bloggers are there anyway.  Is anyone keeping score?  So, I did a search.  Back in 2006 the number was estimated at 50 million.  By 2007 the number was over 70 million according to The Blog Herald. More recent numbers are harder to come by.  I suppose it’s like thinking about the federal deficit.  After you pass well into the trillions you lose interest in that actual number.  Does anyone including McDonalds know how many burgers they’ve sold anymore?

The point is it’s never been easy to develop a strategy for engaging bloggers on behalf of brands.  The numbers are numbing.  Unless you’re McDonalds there are more bloggers than there are people in most brand’s target audiences.

Which is exactly why social media and open channels are so important.  Brand managers may be reluctant to create channels in which their brands might be ranted against, but the benefits of a dialogue versus a monologue are too big to argue against.  With an open channel you don’t have to spend time trying to find the bloggers you need to reach, they’ll find you.  In no time you’ll know what makes them happy and what makes them mad.

The reality of a digitally driven media culture is that transparency is unavoidable.  One-way marketing channels are not only obsolete they’re impossible.  It’s like protectionism versus globalism.  We can be nostalgic about our own little corner of it, but we’re one big open noisy world.

So what’s the best strategy?  After you open the channels.  It’s tactics.

In a way, the introduction of Apple’s iPad was a ringing endorsement of our business model.  We owe Steve Jobs a debt of thanks for being so optimistic about our future.  Full Circle branding now has a convergence device on which to display all our skills.  Especially advertising.

Pretty soon it’s going to be hard to decide what to use an iPad for, not so much because of its limitations, which seems to be the nit-picky focus of the technorati, but for what it’s possibilities are.  Magazines will no longer be static, but rich interactive environments.  The advertising possibilities will give us an opportunity to stream video, show photography, demonstrate products and provide links to client websites.  Video and music content will offer a target rich environment for sponsorships.  Even the most traditional form of communication, the book, will be open to advertising in ways never before possible.  A win-win when handled with some subtlety and style.

As inspiring as it is to consider the close-in possibilities, the next wave is even more of a ride. The iPad application base and technical foundation should rapidly evolve into large touch screen surfaces where we’ll be making presentations that make today’s Keynotes and Powerpoints look like cave drawings.

For an advertising person with an idea, this just could be the ultimate weapon.  We’ll now go to battle for our brands feeling like Ceasar.  iSaw. iPad. iConquered.

Forbes just listed the marketing world’s 10 most trusted celebrities.

The fact that Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) led the list over the guy who drove Miss Daisy (Morgan Freeman) should make the validity of this ranking a little suspect.  Maybe the value of celebrities in general is a little suspect, too.

As of this posting, the Forbes website has this list archived above the top ten retirement havens.  Marketers who bank on celebrities might want to keep that second list handy.  Celebrities are a little too much like politicians who are a little too much like all the rest of us.  Prone to bad behavior.

In spite of all the risks, there have been some spectacular endorsements. Michael Jordan and Nike leap to mind.  But it’s rare to be that right.

Michael Jordan is also the spokesperson for Hanes along with Charlie Sheen, a serial bad-boy.  He replaces Cuba Gooding Jr. in a continuing story line as the B-list celebrity who wants part of Michael’s A-list aura.  Michael comes across as unapproachable.  Mere stars aren’t even good enough for this guy.  Trouble is, you can’t replace an idea with a celebrity as so many spots try to do.  It’s either the celebrity getting in the way of the product, or vice versa.  My guess is celebrities don’t fit Hanes they way they used to.

A great old maxim went, if you don’t have anything important to say, get someone important to say it.  Today, brands just can’t afford to say nothing.  Mere awareness just won’t cut it anymore.

The great brands, like Kraft, Proctor & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, Johnson Wax, McDonald’s, Coke, Google, IBM, and Apple rarely use celebrities.  They focus on always having something new to talk about.  Sure there are plenty of exceptions, but in way too many cases, celebrities just aren’t good enough for a brand.

I get asked all the time what’s going to happen to advertising in the future. Good question… I wonder about that a lot. It’s hard to know where to turn your head next. Truth is, advertising hinges on the future of media, just like a lot of businesses.

Mobile and social media are changing faster than you can keep up with. What’s interesting is that the focus has been on two discussions. 1.) The death of print media. and 2.) The convergence of on-line and broadcast, or TVs and computers. On top of that, everyone’s expecting mobile and social media to be game changers, if they aren’t already.

The great thing about the future is that it’s always different than what we think it’s going to be. Well, if you’re wondering how traditional print magazines ever hope to survive in the future, as soon as next year, check out this article about traditional content and the Apple tablet. It’s from a web-site that’s speculating about the new Apple tablet rumored for 2010 release and how Time, Inc. is creating content in anticipation. Is it print any more? Is it a computer anymore? Is it a TV? Is it the internet?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then some. I can’t wait!

The great thing about the future is it’s always different than what we think it’s going to be. I’m not sure about the future, but I do know it’s great in demo form.

Many years ago there was a wonderful New Yorker cartoon of two advertising types standing in an aisle of the grocery store. It was so many years ago they were both guys and both wearing coats and ties. You could tell the account guy because his hair was parted and he wore a striped tie. The creative guy had a curly hippie ʻfro and huge flowery tie. They were looking at a large woman in a house dress with her hair in
curlers who was staring at the choices in a frozen food case. The caption read, “Thatʼs your target audience.” Times have changed, but some things havenʼt.

Weʼve gotten better at getting closer to our target audience. Social media will bring us even closer as we get better at taking advantage of the immediacy and intimacy it gives us. But thereʼs a dark side to knowing our customer too well, too.

Itʼs true that if you lose your brand loyalists you lose your brand. In a tough economy thereʼs more interest and effort at zeroing in on our best customers. But itʼs also true that brand loyalists may be the least likely to want to see their brands change. Learning and listening should not about eliminating risk. It should be about reducing the odds of getting it wrong. Steve Jobs has pointed out that the trouble with asking the consumer
what they want is that by the time you can give it to them they want something else. One of the most exciting things about the chaotic media landscape is that we can get to know our customers better. But, letʼs not ever be afraid to surprise them with what weʼve learned. And letʼs also push ourselves to talk to somebody new. And donʼt forget to stick your nose in the store to see whoʼs buying it.

Dark thoughts started with e-mail from our executive producer in Chicago. He sent a link to a podcast called What’s Next for Advertising from National Public Radio (an ad free medium ironically).

Catching up after three days in the Chequamegon National Forest, this e-mail found me receptive to primal concerns. It was a slight adjustment from questions like, “Is that wolf poop?” to being in the right frame of mind to think about professional survival.

I just knew a show about the future of advertising had to have a Shakespearean plot to it. The final scene of Act III would end with the stage littered with bodies.

I listened and I wasn’t disappointed.

Mass media dies. The big agencies are next to go. After all, why would a consumer listen to an ad when a blogger can tell them what to buy? The podcast goes way beyond the killing of Madmen, too. It also predicts the end of mass marketing. Not even Proctor & Gamble comes out this story alive.

The argument goes that without mass media, mass-market brands can’t do the volume they require. Something about efficiencies getting lost. It’s hard to survive inefficiency. There is no known cure.

But then things get brighter. There are some Utopian speculations about how more “backyard” brands will pop-up and inherit the earth. I hear birds chirping and butterflies fluttering. As the media fragments, it gets more specialized, actually helping niche brands find niche markets.

For big brands life just gets a little more complicated. The challenge will be to partner with the media and create big audiences – more like the old days than the nowadays really.

What will remain a challenge for both large brands and small is to have ideas. They’ll need concepts around which to organize their marketing. They’ll need us.

Things aren’t as scary as they seem. Yes, it was wolf poop. Yes, my dog and I are still here.

But first, take a look at Ogilvy’s and Crispin’s new web-sites.

These are new designs that position both agencies as leading edge by using aggregated media stories about them and their clients as an opening screen.

I love the urgency and energy.  In both cases, the clutter that I’ve been fighting professionally all these years has become the organizing concept.  In a weird twist on Marshall Mcluhan’s insight of the medium becoming the message, we’ve seen the Bauhaus movement toward white space and simplicity yield to a supernova of design.  These sites are like trying to read the Congressional Record on acid.   Yet they work.

There’s a wonderful irony at work here.  Agencies are using clutter to demonstrate their ability to cut through it.  These sites serve as a vivid demonstration that the loss of control a lot of marketers are experiencing puts an even greater emphasis on ideas that elbow their way into our consciousness.

Maybe what we’re seeing is the transitional period from white space to white noise as a design maxim.

If you sold a car every time someone said, “GM’s got to stop doing business the same old way,” you’d still be working for the largest car company in the world.  The funny thing is those people never offer up an example of what that new way of doing business should be.

I’ll try to be an exception.

I’d like to see people walk into your showrooms (before I add the “and” that would be the objective in and of itself) and see three competing brands: Let’s go with the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry and Chevy Malibu.

Advertising should be created to ask prospective car buyers to “Compare the three best values in the automotive industry to see which is best for you – in one stop.”  While we’re at it, let’s offer test-drives for all three, too.   Want to compare?  Come on down.  We’ll save you time, gas and money before you buy anything.

Follow-up angle:  Remove the badging on the Malibu and take it around the country as a “concept” car.  Record what people think.  This is going to sell for less than its gas mileage – mid 20s, “What do you think?”  Who makes it? Surprise, its General Motors and we make the best car pound for pound dollar for dollar with a great dealer network coast to coast to back it up.

Then make more ads out of the commentary.

Let’s invite everyone to contrast and compare these vehicles on-line, too.  Consumers, industry experts, bloggers – all those people who have been telling you what to do for years.  Let’s have a web 2.0 smack-down.  Go to PoundForPoundDollarForDollar.com to join in.

The whole point:  Push Chevy into a competitive set with Honda and Toyota, a smarter, tighter competitive set than it might be in right now.

It’s time to get America talking about your car and not your car company.

I’m reminded we’re in a recession every time I check my e-mail. Where were all these people who want to turbo-charge our new business efforts a year ago? Employed probably.

Ironically, while there’s a universal shortage of business, there’s no shortage of new business opportunities. According to a contact at AdForum, web searches for agencies are up nearly double what they were a year ago.

While a new agency may or may not be the answer to jumpstart a brand, new thinking is definitely needed. No matter what your business, the competition is starting to look like hyenas around a fresh kill on the Serengeti. Discounts are so deep whatever normal was won’t ever be normal again. A Wisconsin car dealer is throwing in a free used car for every new car purchased. Unreal. The real surprise is, it’s working. He’s trying to hire 50 people to meet the demand.

If there’s a lesson in this, it’s don’t be shy. Now more than ever brands need to get their edge on. It may be harder to afford advertising, especially in the face of incredible consumer resistance and uncertainty, but there’s little doubt those pushing hardest will get fed first.

I work back and forth between our Chicago and Milwaukee offices, so I pay close attention to three local major daily newspapers. One’s in bankruptcy, another’s stock is trading for $.59 and the third’s stock is trading for $.03. The daily paper’s themselves cost more than a share of their stock. Last time I checked a package of Cottonelle toilet tissue was selling for $3.59, just to put additional perspective on the value of newsprint.

There’s no mystery to what the problem is.  I can go online and get the same or more up to the minute content for free, so why pay?  But, this doesn’t seem like a sustainable business model either.

It’s pretty clear that people are as hungry for news as they ever were. Yet most of the online links still serve content that is funded by an old school print or broadcast brand. If they go away who exactly will pay the people who write the news? This is where advertising always comes in. If the newspapers are lucky, they’ll monetize their websites before all their reporters and columnists drift off into the blogosphere. The survivors will make money. They always do.

After all, brands are a short cut to understanding. So the online brands that gain awareness will grow and prosper. It’s interesting that bloggers are now migrating into branded websites so they can become sponsored content. Maybe the future won’t be neatly divided into main news, local news, sports, lifestyle and business. But don’t bet against it. How many different websites do we want to bookmark after all?  One thing’s for sure, the need to know what’s going on won’t go away.

Maybe the new normal will begin to look like the old normal. Only with fewer trees and dirty fingers involved.