Servant of Chaos

The YouTube Creator Playbook is Your New Best Friend

If you are like me, you will have done some experimentation with YouTube. Sometimes it works – and sometimes you have to delete your video before the world catches it and you become an unintentional (or unwitting) viral star!

But while there is no doubt that YouTube is an important part of your marketing mix – the question remains – how do you maximise the benefits and value of YouTube within your marketing framework? And how do you do so with limited (or no) experience in the production of video? Finally – what are the best practices that you can follow in order to not present yourself in a way that is a detriment to your brand?

If this sounds like you, then the YouTube Creator Playbook may well become your best friend. Check it out – and then send me a link to your most embarrassing video! (Oh and you may need to click the button to open the playbook in a new window – the resizing is not kind)

The Brand Book - a Curiosity or Indispensible Guide

Brand books and style guidelines are curious beasts. In a way, they hark back to a time where brands operated in a strange ether – halfway between the world of business and consumer. They told us what the business wanted the brand to be.

Skittles Brand Book

Of course, they were often a great way to get up to speed for new people brought into the marketing team – or the agency. A good brand book (if one was to actually read and absorb it) was, in this way, invaluable.

But things have changed a great deal since I first saw my first brand book (funnily enough I think it was for IBM). If a brand really is in the hands, minds and conversations of your customers (or other stakeholders), what is the role of the brand book? Should it go beyond design and aspiration? Should it help to set the tone for brand engagement and conversation? And should it even be a “book”?

I’m not asking because I have the answers. I just have the questions. And I think that there’s much we need to revisit from a branding perspective. It seems that social media provided some new opportunities for brands and for branding, but we’ve only really scraped the surface. And in some cases, we coming full circle – using social media as broadcast rather than as a competitive differentiator.

Maybe we need to start with the brand book itself. Otherwise it’s just a curiosity – a remnant from a bygone era rather than an indispensible guide for maintaining relevance with our customers.

NAB to Banks - It’s About the Honesty

A couple of months ago, the National Australia Bank caused a stir in the financial services industry by encouraging the customers of other banks to “break up” with their bank. This weekend, NAB are taking it to a new level, running a series of social experiments on the subject of honesty – and publicising the results. Here’s a sample.

Apparently, Australians are an honest bunch – and the #honestaus campaign wants to bring that honesty to into the world of credit cards. What do you think? Is it a stunt or is it for real? Is that what we want from banks?

It sure makes a change from the staid, mechanistic communications I normally receive from my banks. And that’s the honest truth.

What Content Do You Post Where and When?

Once you have your strategy in place, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of publishing. It’s time to determine the types of content you will be producing and where and how you are going to publish it. It’s time to setup an editorial calendar.

But I don’t want you to think of an editorial calendar as a series of items which you post over time. I want you to think of an editorial calendar as a way of engaging your customers at different stages of your customer relationship. I want you to think about how you tie content to ROI – and to delivering value against your key performance indicators.

Take a look at the content grid chart below (hat tip toiLoveCharts). It is a great starting point for your content planning. Think particularly around the borders between elements. What kind of content will help your customers move from awareness to consideration? How can you brief and deliver your creative elements in such a way that they remove barriers for your customers moving from one stage to another?

And finally, find easy ways for your customers to engage and buy from you. Don’t make it too difficult. And once they buy once, make it easy to do so again. Help them talk about their brand experience. Encourage it. And remember, every little tweet is magic. Every Like can recommend. And sometimes the best branded content you can have is produced by someone else other than you.

Guest Post: It's Not About the Method, It's About the Message

Over the years, one particular question is starting to become the norm. "What's our message?" Ok, I would expect this question from a small business or a startup selling something like snail-flavoured crackers. They get an idea, they are passionate about the idea, and boom, they think the next step is for us to crank out a logo or website. Unfortunately they aren't the only ones tripping over this error.

Organizations pulling in 20 million in revenue have the same question. When we are brought in, as goal-oriented graphic designers, the goal should be presented. We should be the creative outlet to communicate the message for that goal, but so many times there is no message to communicate. These companies spend their time focusing on the platform they will use to deliver the message, but not the message itself. It's like choosing a method of transportation before knowing your destination. This may have been permissible when bigger marketing budgets meant more ads plastered everywhere and more revenue, but this doesn't fly anymore.

In a new global economy consumers are harder to attract, and naturally suspicious of your motives. In this market place, simply spewing out gorgeous designs won't do; I can pay anyone with Photoshop a few bucks and get that. We need to be more emotionally and culturally sensitive. Simply jumping on Twitter and Facebook, or creating a "viral" video won't do it, these were trendy at first, but they are quickly morphing into simple distribution channels like web sites, email or texting.

Companies need to press their marketing firms, design firms and other ad teams to focus on goals. As a designer, let me caution the Marketing VPs and Communication Directors out there: Your ad campaign message needs to be established independently of the method of communication. The design should be the very last step. It's not about the method, it's about the message.

---

Justin Brady is the quick-witted founder of Test of Time Design in Des Moines, Iowa.  http://www.testoftimedesign.com/blog

The Future of Markets

A couple of times each year, about 4000 marketers at Fortune 1000 and Forbes Top 200 companies are surveyed about the future. This is the sixth in the series from CMOsurvey.org.

What’s encouraging to see is improvements in key business areas, including:

• Overall optimism about the economy (while focused on the US economy, there are obvious flow-on effects for Australia and the rest of the world)
• Customer interactions, including higher purchase volumes and better customer retention, are expected to improve
• Broad financial and marketing KPIs are on the rise – indicating business confidence doesn’t just sit with marketing and brand
• Marketers themselves will be in-demand with CMOs expecting to grow their teams by up to 50%

The report is very broad – which is great – but it means you will need to spend some time reading through and applying the data to your business. Think through your own strategic planning for 2011. Where are the correlations? Where are the differences? Why do they occur? Check, for example, slide 14 which investigates the top three reasons for growth strategy and see how closely they correspond to your own. Is there something you are missing? Is there something you can add to the execution of your marketing program this year? Can social media amplify this?

Most importantly, think about how your markets – your customers, partners, suppliers and other stakeholders – are moving. What are their futures. Use this information to make sure that those futures all intersect!

The cmo survey highlights and insights, feb 2011

View more presentations from christinemoorman.

Five Reasons NOT to Renovate Your Bathroom with Harvey Norman

When I worked at IBM, I often heard the quote, “no one ever got fired for buying IBM”. I loved this as an idea – and still do. It neatly encompasses the robust, trustworthy status of the big blue brand. It provides customers with the promise that while the price may come at a premium, that delivery will be flawless; and it provides employees with a rallying point, something to live up to. And in my years with IBM, I saw this promise fulfilled by teams of talented people. Not only were these people experts in their field, sometimes they came close to genius.

Recently, I went through the exercise of having my bathroom renovated. Now, I like to build things in my shed, but I am far from professional. I was more than happy to turn this over to professionals. Sure it will cost, but I wanted the expertise and experience. I didn’t expect a genius, but I did expect flawless execution. I did expect them to deliver a superior customer experience.

This did not happen.

So if you are in the market for a bathroom renovation and are considering Harvey Norman Renovations, then closely read these five reasons NOT to renovate your bathroom with Harvey Norman:

1. The sparkle ends when the contract is signed. Our designer was great. He guided us through the myriad choices and budget options. Nothing was a problem and his suggestions really did help. But once the contract is signed, you are in a whole other world. The charismatic designer is replaced by the grumpy, uncommunicative subcontractor who invades your house and sets up camp. There will be problems and a million reasons why something cannot be done – or done well. You’re in for an argument every day.
2. Sales bait and switch. The designer will sell you a vision for your new bathroom. That’s the one that you sign up for. But the reality is quite different. Take a look at the table below to see the silver words and an explanation of what they mean.
3. The design is the blueprint, unless it’s too much work for the contractor. If you’re like me, you will be relying on the expertise of “Harvey Norman” to complete your bathroom to the best of their abilities. You’ll be expecting them to work to the agreed design and promise. But there will be many things that just seem to be “not possible”. Where something is “not in the design” it will be classed as a “variation”, but where the design appears to involve substantial effort, work arounds will be the order of the day. Note, while Harvey Norman variations will cost you extra, your variations do not result in a discount. It’s amazing what can actually be done if you push hard enough, but then again, it’s another argument that you have to have. 
4. The site supervisor is non-existent. When something doesn’t go to plan, who do you speak with? When you want to check or validate the work of the contractor, who do you turn to? As explained above, I’m not a building professional. I rely entirely on the expertise, experience and goodwill of what I thought was Harvey Norman. Our “site supervisor” was only “on site” one day – in three weeks. And then, for a grand total of about 15 minutes. The small changes, accommodations and variations accumulate each day. There’s no supervision and no second opinion on the direction your bathroom is taking.
5. Start and end dates. There is no end date in your contract, so your contractor can drag your project on as long as it takes. Our contractor would start about 11am and work on and off for a few hours before heading home for a well-earned rest. As to start dates – we weren’t even scheduled to start with the contractor – the paperwork had to be “found” and the work had to be scheduled – but only after a series of phone calls that got us all off to a bad start. What were we thinking? We’d only given them TWO MONTHS NOTICE to start.

Table of Harvey Norman Renovation promises and what they really mean

Promise	What it means
“We do everything but the painting”	If you can badger the contractor enough to actually do his job, you might have walls that will only need a couple of days sanding before you can paint them.
“We strip out everything and you’ll get a completely new bathroom”	We will replace the wall below 1200mm which will be covered with tiles anyway, but above that you’ll still have the same old gyprock you thought you were getting rid of.
“Patch and make good”	Actually replacing gyprock and cornices is not part of our deal – even if we have to smash it to fit. We’ll cover it up with a dash of plaster and hope we can make it look at least half as good as it was before we got here.

So – how did it all turn out? I’ll let you know when it is actually finished. In the meantime, I will write up some tips for “getting what was expected from Harvey Norman Renovations” – and even share some of the work in progress pictures.

Note: the image above is from Flickr. It’s not my bathroom.

UPDATE: Kudos to the Harvey Norman social media team who contacted me via LinkedIn. Good to see. Here's hoping that this leads to others having a better renovation experience.

The Social Marketer - Feeling the Social Media Love

There is one big difference between what I would consider “traditional marketing” and “social media marketing”. It’s love. Or perhaps more precisely, it’s passion. Mixed in with a bit of love. And as there are a bunch of posts on the love theme this Valentines Day week, I thought I’d climb aboard the love bus.

Now, if you are a brand marketer, you might love what you are doing, and love what you are creating through your brand, but that’s not the sort of love I am talking about. When you pour your professional creativity into a new product or service and stake your professional reputation on its success, your interest in the brand/offering you are building can consume you. And while this takes a huge personal commitment from you, there is no one else who will love what you are doing quite like you do. I know, and I’ve been there.

And even if you are tweeting from the dark side of the focus group mirror, or blogging on the behind-the-scenes tour, this is not being a “social marketer”. It’s sharing your passion. Sharing your love. Sharing your work. But ultimately, it’s sharing your brand. It is good brand marketing practice.

The social marketer, however, starts from a different place. As Michael Brenner suggests, it’s about feeling the love.

For the social marketer:

• The brand is a means to an end. The brand exists, the people exist – we don’t need messaging, but a tune to dance to.
• Marketing is about bringing the brand to the people, not bringing the people to the brand
• The glare of the logo is a distraction and a barrier to forming relationships. What we need is a name and a face, not a 12pt white space exclusion

Sure, the social marketer cares about (and is probably even MEASURED on) brand awareness, recall and yes – sales. But they are by-products of the main game.

The social marketer is in the process of transforming the way that we all do business. You probably have one in the ranks of your company. There may be more. How do you find them? How do you join them?

I call it “The Social Way”.

There’s more to come.

Volkswagen Uses The Force

They say that you should never share the stage/screen with an animal or a child (otherwise you will be upstaged). But can you use this to your advantage? Sure. That’s what VW did with this ad for the new Passat. But will it change your Volkswagen experience?

Brands are the Social Stories We Tell

Prompted by a message from Sean Howard, asking about brand visualisation tools, I revisited a post from 2009. Titled Brands are the Stories We Tell, it looks at a personal profiling tool from MIT that lets you map out the characteristics that describe “you”. While the end sequence is useful from a persona mapping point of view, I particularly like the way that the persona building process is visualised.

Here is what I saw when building out a profile on gavin heaton. Click the image below for the full view. It’s like watching the Google web spiders in action – collating what the web thinks of you.

Of course, when you profile a brand or a product, then you also end up with an interesting sequence that describes how and where your brand lives online. But I think it’s most important to watch HOW the profile is built. Here’s why:

1. The repetition of keywords and their proximity to other keywords will create a centre of gravity for your brand. Ensure that the stories you tell about your brand connect with your desired brand experience keywords
2. Increasingly, social media content is creating the online context for your brand. This means that your content marketing needs to be strong – make sure that you have well-planned social content that help optimise your story across the social web
3. Your brand is the stories that other people tell – if there are an overwhelming number of negative stories, it’s going to make your brand a centre of gravity for all the wrong reasons. Get the experience right!
4. You will see trends and themes in the data. Use these to tactically build your presence in places that there are already conversations taking place. Don’t hijack the conversation. Add to it.
5. Social content wins … content from blogs and social networking sites outperforms all other content on the web. This means that your brand is the story told by others in a social context.

So what does the web tell you about your brand? Check out the MIT personas tool to find out.