In my last post, I wrote about the ever higher authenticity expectations that consumers have of their brand interactions.  To meet those expectations, marketers spend millions with agency partners and agonize over how to structure their agency rosters. 

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In fact, we found that two-thirds of clients are establishing lead or full-service agency partnership models in hopes of achieving integrated communications.  But if you ask clients their likelihood of recommending their current agency partners on their ability to deliver the most target-resonant creative or touchpoint ideas, you get embarrassing NPS scores (see the graphic at left). 

What gives?

Here’s the problem: the cast of characters on the typical agency roster is too far removed from today’s target audiences to routinely and convincingly clear a higher authenticity bar.  Read More »

Inauthenticity.  Human senses are wired to sniff it out.  We pick up subtle cues in non-verbal gestures.  Entire fields of expertise have developed to study nonverbal communications.

We make note of eye contact, or lack thereof (known as oculesics).  We know when smiles are artificial from movement of facial muscles (known as kinesics).  We can sense undercurrents of real emotion in voices (paralanguage or vocalics).

All of these are subtle indicators that, taken together, enable us to judge reasonably accurately whether something (or somebody) is fishy or truly authentic.

Click Image to Enlarge | Consumer expectations of authenticity are increasing; marketers who don’t keep up risk consumer punishment.

When it comes to marketing communications, consumers seem willing to tolerate moderate authenticity—the middle in the distribution at left.  After all, we as consumers expect some level of artificiality from advertising, as with movies or TV shows.  But, consumers duly reward or punish communications in the tails of the authenticity curve. 

Focus on the Zone of Reward in the right tail of the authenticity curve.  You see this kind of authenticity in Burger King’s Whopper Freakout ads—you don’t need a subtitle to tell you those are real people’s reactions.  As a result, these ads are subtly more powerful for consumers, and they reward Burger King for that.  Read More »

I’ve just left the lush autumn of the Pacific Northwest, having visited Microsoft to talk social media shop with the leaders of their customer support group.  Microsoft is working on some impressive social media tools, to be sure.  But they were quick to point out that social media is about conversations FIRST, not the platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) or the management tools.

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It’s a point worth underscoring, especially for marketers.  From the data we’ve gathered via our Social Media Maturity Diagnostic, we know that Marketing and/or Corporate Communications are leading the social media charge in large (i.e., Fortune 1000) enterprises 65% of the time.  But when it comes to Customer Support involvement, more than 40% of large companies don’t involve support peers at all!  In another 50%, they are only moderately involved. That’s a huge problem. Read More »

There you sit, downcast, watching your social media investment proposal burst into flames.  The CFO has just leveled the “fuzzy math” charge at you. The head of sales is yammering on about how he could hire another salesperson for your proposed social media investment, and he could guarantee X incremental sales.

There’s a devilish catch-22 at play here.  As with any new touchpoint or technology, you can’t credibly project ROI until you make an investment, but you can’t get the investment resources without showing ROI.

How to skin this cat?

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Try the 70*20*10 portfolio argument (illustrated at left).  The logic goes like this:

In any fiscal year, marketing communications spend should be reviewed at a portfolio level.  Roughly 70% of spend ought to go toward “tried and true” touchpoints. Our organization is familiar with these touchpoints.  We know their mechanics. We know the returns they deliver, or at least have benchmarks for what good looks like. Read More »

Last time, I wrote about how marketers should choose the right social experience—one that accentuates unique strengths—to put at the center of integrated communications.  We’re now at a spot where we can structure and assign roles to our other touchpoints so we can scale that social experience.

To get started, break touchpoints into two categories: secondary touchpoints (the outer circle in the graphic below) and supporting touchpoints (the middle circle):

Click Image to Enlarge | Secondary and supporting touchpoints establish a mental link and then drive the target audience to the social experience focal point.

1.  Secondary Touchpoints link the social experience to your brand for the target audience.  They’re often mass in nature—TV, out-of-home, print, and so on.  Best Buy’s TV ads showcasing Twelpforce are one example of such a secondary touchpoint.

2.   Supporting Touchpoints drive the target audience to the desired social experience.  Targeted banner ads, paid search, and direct marketing often do well here.  Best deployed, these touchpoints will:

• Engage a target audience at moments when they are susceptible to or desirous of the social experience
• Enable easy entry to the experience. Read More »

Last week, I wrote about marketers putting social experience at the center of their integrated communications.  I referred to Best Buy and Twelpforce.  Just this weekend, I caught a flurry of Honda TV spots promoting a particular Honda Facebook experience.

One of the open questions for marketers: How should one go about identifying the right social experience?

Answer: Identify an imprinting experience that best highlights your brand’s differentiating attributes or benefits. Read More »

Intriguingly, Best Buy is putting Twelpforce at the center of its big communications initiative for the holiday season.  Looking at data from the 125 companies that have taken the Council’s social media maturity diagnostic, we know that only 11% of marketers have built social media into their integrated communications planning processes.  That got me to thinking…

Most B2C marketers take the “tonnage” approach to touchpoint planning.  They work back from growth goals and volume targets to plan their touchpoint mix—their mix models tell them how much money they need to dump into broadcast, out-of-home, print, promotions and the like, to hit those volume targets.  Social and experiential touchpoints play second fiddle, at best.  Read More »

What can Romano’s Macaroni Grill’s re-engineering of its tomato bruschetta dish teach us about innovation in a recession?

Most marketers are relying on price and promotional shifts to re-position their brands for value.  By contrast, savvy marketers are re-assessing their products more holistically, taking into account how raw materials and production costs interact with traditional marketing disciplines like consumer understanding and pricing.

Enter Macaroni Grill, which reported in The Wall Street Journal | Sep 16 is reworking its menu to get away from 1,000 + calorie items—its consumers want to eat more healthily.  The restaurant’s tomato bruschetta appetizer makeover illustrates recession-minded innovation at its best: Read More »